Washington: Four ‘faithless electors’ to be fined $1,000 each for not casting Clinton votes | The Seattle Times

Fines of $1,000 each are headed for the mailboxes of four Democratic electors who refused to honor Washington state’s popular vote for president. Secretary of State Kim Wyman’s office said the citations were mailed to the so-called “faithless electors” on Thursday. The penalties stem from the Electoral College vote on Dec. 19, when Washington’s 12 electors met to officially cast the state’s vote for president and vice president of the U.S. In acts of protest, four of them refused to cast their ballots for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won the state with 54 percent of the vote — breaking state law and their own written pledges.

Editorials: The Electoral College Doesn’t Work the Way the Founding Fathers Intended | Robert Schlesinger/US News & World Report

Regardless of whether you want to preserve the Electoral College as it is, tweak it (as I do) or scrap it entirely, you have to understand that it doesn’t function today the way the Founding Fathers planned. I think this is worth pointing out in light of the animated responses I’ve gotten from readers regarding my last column, which called for reform by adding a set of bonus electoral votes which would be rewarded to the winner of the national popular vote. People seem to make a couple of errors in their reverence for the Electoral College. First, they misunderstand its purpose, and concomitantly they misunderstand what it does and doesn’t constitutionally entail.

Editorials: One person, one vote is a myth | William Chafe/News & Observer

Ever since our nation’s founding, the issue of equal voting rights has been central to our definition of democracy. After we fought the Civil War to end black slavery – the ultimate contradiction of living in a free republic – the country enacted the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. Black people were guaranteed equal protection under the laws; black men earned the right to vote. Women too had demanded the suffrage, a battle they finally won with ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. And in a fight waged under the slogan “one person, one vote,” the civil rights movement secured enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Finally, it seemed, America had guaranteed the right of every citizen, black or white, male or female, to have equal access to the polling place – one person, one vote. Alas, it was not true. One reason was the existence of the Electoral College, an institution that by design sought to deny one person, one vote. Almost always, this denial was connected to the issue of race.

Editorials: A dangerous gambit: The failed electoral-college rebellion bodes ill for future elections | Steven Mazie/The Economist

The last-ditch effort by some Democrats to thwart a Donald Trump presidency ended in a fizzle on December 19th. The 538 members of the electoral college—the body that officially elects America’s chief executive, as ordained by Article II of the constitution—handed the real-estate magnate 304 votes, two shy of the total he was projected to win after the people voted on November 8th but a comfortable 34 votes more than the 270 he needed to win a majority. Mr Trump is set to be inaugurated as America’s 45th president on January 20th. The ill-fated Hail Mary was lobbed by a number of liberal intellectuals, including Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and short-lived 2016 presidential candidate. In an opinion piece for the Washington Post last month, Mr Lessig observed that Hillary Clinton handily won the national popular vote. Since electoral-college electors are “citizens exercising judgment,  not cogs turning a wheel”, they should feel free to ignore the popular vote totals in their home states. Electors should then stand up for the principle of “one person, one vote”, Mr Lessig suggested, and switch their allegiance to Hillary Clinton. Other advocates called on Trump electors to use their independent judgment to vote for another, more savoury Republican. If 38 electors would opt for the likes of John Kasich or Mitt Romney, Mr Trump would fall short of 270 and the House of Representatives would get to pick the president from among the top-three vote getters. The House would then be free to send a Republican other than Mr Trump to the White House.

National: Electoral College sees record-breaking defections | Politico

The seven so-called “faithless” votes cast by members of the Electoral College on Monday may go down as a noisy footnote to an otherwise chaotic 2016 election. But they also represent a historic breach between electors and the candidates they were expected to vote for. The number of faithless votes has now become the most-ever cast in a single presidential election. The record was set in 1808, when six Democratic-Republican electors opposed James Madison. It’s also the first time since 1832 in which more than a single elector cast a faithless vote. The bulk of the votes came from Washington state, where three Democratic electors bucked Hillary Clinton and cast votes for Colin Powell, a retired general, an African-American — and a Republican. These Democrats were supporting a failed effort meant to block the election of Donald Trump and unite behind an alternative Republican candidate. Powell turned out to be their choice.

Editorials: Faithless Electors: Now It’s Up to Congress | Derek T. Muller/Wall Street Journal

The 538 members of the Electoral College convened Monday and cast a majority of their votes for Donald Trump for president and Mike Pence for vice president. When Congress convenes on Jan. 6 to count the votes, it will mostly be a formality. But its decision to count or exclude the votes of some “faithless electors” will set a precedent for future elections. Faithless electors are those who are supposed to vote for the candidates named on the ballot but instead vote for someone else. States faced a number of faithless electors this year, mostly one-time supporters of Bernie Sanders. Democratic Party electors in Minnesota and Colorado were replaced when they attempted to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton. A Maine elector attempted to vote for Mr. Sanders; his vote was ruled improper, and he changed his vote to Mrs. Clinton. A Hawaii elector broke a state pledge and voted for Mr. Sanders. Four Washington state electors violated a state pledge and cast three votes for Colin Powell and one for Faith Spotted Eagle. Two Republican electors in Texas cast votes for Ron Paul and John Kasich. It is now the duty of Congress, which holds power under the Twelfth Amendment, to determine how to count the electoral votes from the several states.

Editorials: Time to End the Electoral College | The New York Times

By overwhelming majorities, Americans would prefer to elect the president by direct popular vote, not filtered through the antiquated mechanism of the Electoral College. They understand, on a gut level, the basic fairness of awarding the nation’s highest office on the same basis as every other elected office — to the person who gets the most votes. But for now, the presidency is still decided by 538 electors. And on Monday, despite much talk in recent weeks about urging those electors to block Donald Trump from the White House, a majority did as expected and cast their ballots for him — a result Congress will ratify next month. And so for the second time in 16 years, the candidate who lost the popular vote has won the presidency. Unlike 2000, it wasn’t even close. Hillary Clinton beat Mr. Trump by more than 2.8 million votes, or 2.1 percent of the electorate. That’s a wider margin than 10 winning candidates enjoyed and the biggest deficit for an incoming president since the 19th century. Yes, Mr. Trump won under the rules, but the rules should change so that a presidential election reflects the will of Americans and promotes a more participatory democracy.

Editorials: American democracy is being derailed. Can faith be restored? | Richard Wolffe/The Guardian

Now that the electoral college has formally selected the next president of the United States, it’s worth taking a deep breath and asking: what kind of democracy do we live in? The will of the people ought to be clear after an election. But as 2016 draws to a close, there are deeply troubling signs that American democracy – after 227 years of seeking a more perfect union – has left the rails. It turns out it’s possible to win the governorship in North Carolina but find the job is stripped of power before you’re sworn into office. And across the nation, we abide by the archaic rules of an electoral college that has all but renounced its first responsibility: to elect someone fit to be president. The Founders may have wanted to prevent demagogues from taking power, but party hacks ignored all that original intent. It makes you wonder why the candidates and voters abide by the rules of a game that nobody is interested in playing.

National: The Electoral College Meets Today. Here’s What to Expect. | The New York Times

On Monday, 538 people will meet to determine who will be the next president. These meetings of the Electoral College, convened in every state and the District of Columbia just shy of six weeks after Election Day, have long been little more than a formality. But the victory of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who lost the popular vote but is projected to win the most electoral votes, has thrust the Electoral College into the spotlight once more. The conclusion of American intelligence agencies that Russia tried to intervene in the election to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign has only intensified the focus in recent days. President Obama on Friday described the Electoral College — originally a compromise between those who wanted Congress to choose the president and those who favored a popular vote — as a “ vestige.” As electors gather in state capitols across the country, here is a rundown of what comes next.

National: Electoral college rebels speak out on a last-ditch hope to stop Trump | The Guardian

On Monday, the 538 members of the electoral college will gather in state capitols across the country to cast their votes for the next president of the United States. With 306 electoral college votes under his belt to Hillary Clinton’s 232, that person will almost certainly be Donald Trump. The iota of doubt that remains comes from an unprecedented eruption of discontent from electors, the body of 538 people chosen by the two main political parties to cast the electoral college vote. Under the peculiarities of the American system, the president is not chosen directly by a “one person-one vote” policy: indeed, Clinton won the popular vote on 8 November by some 2.9m ballots. Instead, it is the indirect electoral college vote, parceled out by a complicated formula and awarded to the candidate who won each state, that is the final arbiter of who occupies the White House. This year, at least eight of the 538 have indicated that they intend to break ranks with modern tradition and vote against their party in a protest directed squarely against Trump. All but one of those rebels are Democratic, which is not coincidental. Many of these Democrats see the electoral college as the last-ditch hope of stopping Trump – the idea being that if their example can encourage their Republican fellow electors to follow suit and rally around a compromise alternative candidate, the Trump presidency can yet be abated.

Colorado: Electors appeal to state Supreme Court to vote against Hillary Clinton | Denver Post

A group of Colorado Democratic electors seeking to vote against Hillary Clinton in defiance of the state’s popular vote are asking the Colorado Supreme Court to set aside a Denver judge’s ruling allowing the Secretary of State to replace them. The petition, filed with the state Supreme Court on Thursday, is the latest legal maneuver to arise from the group known as the “Hamilton Electors,” a movement aimed at blocking Republican businessman Donald Trump from the presidency by forcing an Electoral College deadlock. On Tuesday, the Denver District Court dealt a blow to the movement, ruling that state law requires electors to vote for the presidential and vice presidential candidates who received the most votes in the state. Denver District Judge Elizabeth Starrs also ruled that the Colorado Secretary of State can replace any elector that violates that law.

Ohio: Stark County residents sue to keep state Rep. Christina Hagan out of Electoral College | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Two Stark County residents have filed a complaint against Republican state Rep. Christina Hagan, looking to keep her from voting for president as a member of the Electoral College. The complaint, filed in Stark County Court of Common Pleas by Andrew Diliddo Jr. and Hagan’s former Democratic opponent, Deborah Cain, says if Hagan were to participate as a presidential elector she would violate the Ohio Constitution. The state constitution prohibits a General Assembly member from serving as a federal or other state official unless that person resigns from their assembly seat, the complaint says. Hagan has not resigned, the complaint says. Cain ran against Hagan, who represents Ohio’s 50th statehouse district, in the 2014 election.

National: 40 Electoral College members demand briefing on Russian interference | The Hill

Forty members of the Electoral College on Tuesday signed a letter demanding an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the election ahead of their Dec. 19 vote. Ten electors originally signed the letter when it was published Monday, and 30 more have since added their names. The open letter — led by Christine Pelosi, the daughter of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) — urged Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to give a detailed briefing on President-elect Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States,” the letter read.

National: RNC keeps close tabs on Electoral College vote | Politico

The Republican National Committee is overseeing an expansive whip operation designed to lock down Donald Trump’s Electoral College majority and ensure that the 306 Republican electors cast their votes for the president-elect. Two RNC sources familiar with the effort said the committee — with the assistance of state Republican parties and the Trump campaign — have been in touch with most of the GOP electors multiple times, and has concluded that only one is a risk to cast a vote against Trump on Dec. 19, when the Electoral College meets. The RNC’s elector head count, the sources emphasized, is standard practice in presidential election years. But this year it also serves as an early-warning system for potentially wayward GOP electors amid an intense push by Democratic electors to convince 37 of their Republican counterparts to jump ship. The Democrats are hoping that dozens of GOP electors — many of whom were picked at local conventions and party meetings dominated by Trump’s opponents — are already primed to resist Trump.

National: Electors demand intelligence briefing before Electoral College vote | Politico

In its first show of public support for efforts questioning the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s victory, Hillary Clinton’s campaign said it is supporting a request by members of the Electoral College for an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election. “The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Clinton’s former campaign chairman John Podesta said in a statement on Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed. Each day in October, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,” he said. “Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

Colorado: Motion rejected in Electoral College suit in Colorado | Politico

A federal judge has rejected a request for an immediate injunction in lawsuit by two presidential electors in Colorado filed as part of a strategy to block Donald Trump’s election. The ruling — by Bill Clinton appointee Wiley Daniel — delivers a crushing blow to the Hamilton Electors, a group of Electoral College members pursuing a strategy to convince presidential electors across the country to unite behind an alternative candidate to Trump. Daniel’s ruling rejected an effort by Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich — two Democratic electors in Colorado — to immediately prevent the enforcement of a state law that forces them to cast their electoral votes for Hillary Clinton when the Electoral College meets next week. Baca and Nemanich hoped that a favorable ruling would undermine similar statutes in 28 other states, including 14 where Trump won. The attorney for the electors, Jason Wesoky, has signaled to the court that he’ll still pursue litigation in the matter.

Editorials: A Post-Election Legal Challenge to the Electoral College | Jacob Gershman/Wall Street Journal

President-elect Donald Trump is weeks away from taking the oath of office, but for two Colorado presidential electors, the 2016 contest remains contested. The electors, who are Democrats vehemently opposed to Mr. Trump in the White House, have filed a lawsuit challenging the winner-takes-all system for casting electoral votes.

Reports the Denver Post: Two Democratic electors who pledged to support Democrat Hillary Clinton — the winner of the state’s nine Electoral College votes — now want to “vote their conscience and do their constitutional duty as intended by the framers,” said Jason Wesoky, the attorney who filed the suit. Polly Baca, a former state lawmaker, and Robert Nemanich are among the “Moral Electors” hoping to persuade Republican electors in other states to vote for a third-party candidate to keep Trump from receiving 270 electoral votes — and offering to shift their Democratic votes to a consensus pick.

National: Anti-Trump forces launch attack on Electoral College | Politico

Anti-Trump forces are preparing an unprecedented assault on the Electoral College, marked by a wave of lawsuits and an intensive lobbying effort aimed at persuading 37 Republican electors to vote for a candidate other than Donald Trump. It’s a bracing stress-test for an institution that Alexander Hamilton envisioned as a safeguard against popular whims, and a direct challenge to the role that the Electoral College has evolved to play in picking the president: constitutional rubber stamp. Behind the overt anti-Trump push is a covert agenda: If the courts establish that individual electors can switch allegiances, supporting candidates other than those who win their states, it would inject so much uncertainty into the process that states may be willing to junk the Electoral College in favor of a popular-vote winner.

National: Anti-Trump forces launch attack on Electoral College | Politico

Anti-Trump forces are preparing an unprecedented assault on the Electoral College, marked by a wave of lawsuits and an intensive lobbying effort aimed at persuading 37 Republican electors to vote for a candidate other than Donald Trump. It’s a bracing stress-test for an institution that Alexander Hamilton envisioned as a safeguard against popular whims, and a direct challenge to the role that the Electoral College has evolved to play in picking the president: constitutional rubber stamp. Behind the overt anti-Trump push is a covert agenda: If the courts establish that individual electors can switch allegiances, supporting candidates other than those who win their states, it would inject so much uncertainty into the process that states may be willing to junk the Electoral College in favor of a popular-vote winner. “There might well be a clamor to get rid of the Electoral College altogether, a move that would have some disadvantages (like eliminating Hamilton’s safeguard) but many advantages as well,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University. “Anyhow, clamor and anger have become par for the course in this loony election year.”

National: Trump’s baseless assertions of voter fraud called ‘stunning’ | Politico

Donald Trump on Sunday used the platform of the presidency to peddle a fringe conspiracy theory to justify his loss of the popular vote, claiming without evidence that millions of people voted illegally Nov. 8. Trump’s tweets marked an unprecedented rebuke of the U.S. electoral system by a president-elect and were met with immediate condemnation from voting experts and others. And they offered a troubling indication that Trump’s ascension to the highest political office in the United States may not alter his penchant for repeating unproven conspiracies perpetuated by the far-right. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump wrote on Twitter. There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim and PolitiFact ruled it false. Several hours later, he added more specifics, but again without any evidence: “Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!” Election law experts quickly rejected Trump’s claims as farfetched. “There’s no reason to believe this is true,” said Rick Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at the University of California, Irvine. “The level of fraud in US elections is quite low.” Hasen added, “The problem of non-citizen voting is quite small — like we’re talking claims in the dozens, we’re not talking voting in the millions, or the thousands, or even the hundreds.”

National: Harassment or Hail Mary? Electors feel besieged | USA Today

To supporters of Hillary Clinton, the number looks intoxicating: 155 electors in states where the popular vote went for Donald Trump — some by slim margins — who apparently aren’t legally bound to vote for the GOP presidential nominee when the Electoral College meets Dec. 19. Solicit them like lobbyists schmooze members of Congress, right? Persuade just a portion, and you’ve got the first woman president, winner of the popular vote, certified by a constitutional authority. She’s got 232 in the bag. She would need 38 “faithless electors” to win this game. That’s the problem with this particular political fantasy. Though electors in several states report that they’re getting thousands of emails, letters and even telephone calls to ask them to switch their votes, they’re among the Republican Party’s most loyal members.

National: The electoral college badly distorts the vote. And it’s going to get worse. | The Washington Post

Donald Trump won the United States presidency with 290 votes in the electoral college. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 62,568,373 votes, as of Nov. 16, to President-elect Trump’s 61,336,159. The electoral college has overruled the popular vote for the second time in the last five presidential elections. If all votes were weighed evenly, Clinton would have received 259 votes in the electoral college. Trump would have 256. Candidates from other parties would also have received electoral college votes. The United States has faced this conflict between the electoral college and the popular vote only four times in the nation’s history (five, if you include John Quincy Adams’s election). But it’s happening more and more often. The electoral college is designed to favor sparsely populated areas. It was created to strengthen the agrarian elite, offer more federal power to slaveholding states, and counterbalance factionalism and polarization. But it’s not doing any of this today. Rather, the electoral college values some votes above others, while entirely disenfranchising the 4 million Americans who live in overseas territories.

National: Don’t expect Electoral College drama on December 19 | Constitution Daily

Despite a popular petition on the Change.org website about how the nation’s 538 electors should vote on December 19, there seems to be little chance of the tactic changing the recent presidential election’s outcome. As of Monday afternoon, more than 4.3 million people signed an online petition “to make Hillary Clinton President on December 19” by calling on electors in the Electoral College to ignore their commitments to vote for Donald Trump. For now, Trump has 290 votes in the Electoral College, compared with 228 for Clinton. The vote counting continues in two states: Michigan and New Hampshire. But Trump only needed 270 votes to clinch the election, which he received early on November 9. Regardless of what happens on December 19, Republican candidate Trump will become the elected President on January 6, 2017, unless some vastly unforeseen event prevents Congress from counting the Electoral College votes during a joint meeting of Congress, or the President-elect is unable to take his oath on Friday, January 20, 2017.

National: The Electoral College Is Hated by Many. So Why Does It Endure? | The New York Times

In November 2000, as the Florida recount gripped the nation, a newly elected Democratic senator from New York took a break from an upstate victory tour to address the possibility that Al Gore could wind up winning the popular vote but losing the presidential election. She was unequivocal. “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people,” Hillary Clinton said, “and to me that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.” Sixteen years later, the Electoral College is still standing, and Mrs. Clinton has followed Mr. Gore as the second Democratic presidential candidate in modern history to be defeated by a Republican who earned fewer votes, in his case George W. Bush. In her concession speech on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton did not mention the popular vote, an omission that seemed to signal her desire to encourage a smooth and civil transition of power after a divisive election. But her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, highlighted her higher vote total than Donald J. Trump’s in introducing her.

Maine: Trump takes 1 of Maine’s 4 electoral votes, in a first for the state | The Portland Press Herald

Maine split its electoral vote for the first time in state history, with Donald Trump’s strong showing in central and northern Maine allowing him to capture one of the state’s four votes in the Electoral College. Republican Trump carried the 2nd Congressional District handily, beating Democrat Hillary Clinton by 51 percent to 41 percent, with 89 percent of the district’s precincts reporting Wednesday morning. Clinton carried the statewide vote, 48 to 45 percent, with 90 percent of precincts reporting. She also won the 1st District vote, 54 percent to 40 percent, with 93 percent of the district’s precincts reporting. Maine allows for a split in its electoral vote, awarding one elector to the winner of each congressional district and two to the winner of the statewide vote. Only Nebraska divvies up its electoral votes in the same manner – all other states award electors on a winner-take-all basis.

National: What would happen if Donald Trump refused to concede the election? | The Guardian

Donald Trump’s refusal to say whether he would accept the outcome of next month’s US presidential election if he were to lose is unprecedented and chilling, legal experts have said. But although the failure by a major party nominee to concede defeat on election night would throw American democracy into uncharted territory, from a legal standpoint, it would hardly make a difference, experts from across the political spectrum said. “Frankly, under our system, it is irrelevant whether the loser concedes or not,” said James Bopp, the conservative constitutional lawyer. “The vote of the electoral college is conclusive.” … Trump’s reticence does not appear to be shared by those closest to him. Just hours before the debate, Trump’s running mate Mike Pence, his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, all insisted that the campaign would accept the result of the election.

Voting Blogs: A Republican Electoral College Hail Mary, and the Current State of the Campaign | Election Law Blog

By all accounts, Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign is imploding, with the latest revelations from a leaked 2005 “Access Hollywood” taping revealing not only Trump’s disrespect for women but a bragging about what amounts to a sexual assault. (Why anyone should be surprisedby this given Trump’s previous statements and actions is something hard to fathom; take the latest expressions of shock with a huge grain of salt). Hillary Clinton, who was already leading in the polls and seemed likely to continue her lead despitenew leaked revelations that she supports free trade and is cozier with banks and big business than she’s admitted (again, no surprise there for anyone paying attention), seems now likely to prevail. Donald Trump has run the worst presidential campaign in modern history, judged only by the week after his poor debate performance featuring comments taking on a former beauty contestant as too fat, complaining about his microphone, supporting the convictions of the exonerated Central Park 5, and making new irresponsible claims about vote rigging and Mexicans coming across the border to vote). And all of that came before the “grab them by the pussy” comments came out. Now, as the many members of the Republican establishment issue condemnations of him but still say they will vote for him and support his choice for the Supreme Court, a few are starting to break ranks, calling on him to withdraw. 

Voting Blogs: If Donald Trump Carries California, He Won’t Get California’s Electoral Votes | Ballot Access News

Due to a combination of eccentric behavior on the part of the California Secretary of State, and the California Republican Party, if Donald Trump carries California in the popular vote on November 8, he still won’t get California’s electoral votes. See the post immediately underneath for an explanation. Due to the ballot format, California voters who wish to vote for Donald Trump will be forced to cast an overvote. The ballot design forces Trump voters to vote for 108 different individuals for presidential elector, yet California is only entitled to 55 electoral votes. Therefore, the votes for Trump will be overvotes and all will be invalid. The California Republican Party was free to have nominated the same presidential elector candidates as the American Independent Party. The AIP turned in its list first, so the Republican Party was aware of the AIP names. But the Republican Party, which filed its slate at the last hour before the deadline for electors, chose to ignore the AIP list and submit different candidates. The AIP had been suggesting a joint list to the Republican Party ever since August, and had even offered to let the Republicans choose 50 members, but the Republicans ignored the AIP request.

Editorials: Is Trump right about ‘rigged’ nomination? | Richard Hasen/ CNN

Each year on April Fools’ Day I intersperse some false but plausible news stories among the real ones on my Election Law Blog. Last year, I got a number of prominent election-law attorneys and activists to believe a false report that a federal court, relying on the Supreme Court’s controversial campaign finance decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, held that the First Amendment protects the right to literally bribe candidates. This year, among false posts, was one in which I had Donald Trump declaring that he would not abide by the results of the Electoral College vote if he was the popular vote winner. The made-up story had him plotting with his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to seize power in the event of a popular vote/electoral vote conflict. Many people believed the post, and it even made aWashington Post list of debunked April Fools’ stories that people fell for. It’s not a surprise. Trump railed against what he perceived as the unfairness of the Electoral College when President Obama won re-election in 2012. And he has consistently whined about what he perceives as unfairness in the electoral process. Combine that with his inflammatory rhetoric, and the idea of a Trump coup is not so crazy.

Nebraska: Winner-take-all electoral vote fails | Lincoln Journal Star

A proposal to dump Nebraska’s distinctive presidential electoral system and establish a statewide winner-take-all vote was trapped Tuesday by a filibuster and buried by the Legislature. A motion to invoke cloture and bring an end to legislative debate fell one senator short of the 33 votes required to proceed with the bill, failing on a 32-17 count. Sens. Tommy Garrett of Bellevue and Bob Krist of Omaha switched from their support for a cloture motion a week ago that had allowed the bill (LB10) to proceed to a final vote this week. The result is that Nebraska will continue to allocate its five electoral votes by awarding one to the winner in each of the three congressional districts and two to the statewide victor.