🇺🇸 Doomscroll News

Tag: US Politics

  • ‪Can Electors Go Rogue? The “Faithless Elector”‬

    ‪Can Electors Go Rogue? The “Faithless Elector”‬

    An elector can vote against the popular vote of their state. This is known as being a “faithless elector.” Historically, however, this has been rare and has never changed the outcome of a presidential election.

    Who are the electors? They are chosen by the political parties in each state. They are often party loyalists, chosen to recognize their service.

    Are there rules against it? Yes, many states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate they are pledged to. The Supreme Court has upheld these laws, allowing states to penalize or replace faithless electors. As of 2024, 38 states and D.C. have such laws.

    As of 2024, the following 12 states do not have any laws that bind electors to the popular vote winner or penalize them for being “faithless”:

    • Arkansas
    • Illinois
    • Iowa
    • Kansas
    • Louisiana
    • New Hampshire
    • New Jersey
    • New York
    • North Dakota
    • Rhode Island
    • Texas
    • West Virginia

    How often does it happen? It’s very infrequent. Out of over 23,000 electoral votes cast in U.S. history, only a small number have been faithless. The most significant number of faithless electors in a single election was in 1872, when a candidate died after the election but before the electors met.

    Of course. While faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a presidential election, there have been numerous instances of them throughout U.S. history.

    Here is a list of every faithless elector vote for a presidential candidate, broken down by election year.

    Instances of Faithless Electors by Election

    2016: This election had the most faithless electors in modern history.

    Pledged to Hillary Clinton (Democrats):

    In Washington, three electors voted for Colin Powell and one voted for Faith Spotted Eagle.

    In Hawaii, one elector voted for Bernie Sanders.

    An elector in Maine attempted to vote for Bernie Sanders, but was forced to change his vote to Clinton.

    Electors in Minnesota and Colorado also attempted to vote for other candidates but were replaced.

    Pledged to Donald Trump (Republicans):

    In Texas, two electors defected. One voted for John Kasich and the other for Ron Paul.

    2004: One Democratic elector from Minnesota, pledged to John Kerry, voted for John Edwards (Kerry’s running mate) for both president and vice president.

    2000: One Democratic elector from the District of Columbia, Barbara Lett-Simmons, abstained from voting for Al Gore as a protest for D.C.’s lack of congressional representation.

    1988: One Democratic elector from West Virginia, Margarette Leach, voted for Lloyd Bentsen (the vice-presidential candidate) for president and Michael Dukakis for vice president.

    1976: One Republican elector from Washington, Mike Padden, voted for Ronald Reagan instead of Gerald Ford.

    1972: One Republican elector from Virginia, Roger L. MacBride, voted for the Libertarian ticket of John Hospers and Tonie Nathan.

    1968: One Republican elector from North Carolina, Lloyd W. Bailey, voted for George Wallace of the American Independent Party instead of Richard Nixon.

    1960: One Republican elector from Oklahoma, Henry D. Irwin, voted for Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd instead of Richard Nixon.

    1956: One Democratic elector from Alabama, W. F. Turner, voted for a local judge, Walter B. Jones, instead of Adlai Stevenson.

    1948: One Democratic elector from Tennessee, Preston Parks, voted for Strom Thurmond of the States’ Rights Democratic Party instead of Harry S. Truman.

    1912: Eight Republican electors voted for Nicholas Murray Butler for vice president instead of James S. Sherman, who had died before the electoral vote. This was a case of a candidate’s death, not a political protest.

    1896: Four People’s Party electors cast their vice-presidential votes for Thomas E. Watson instead of the Democratic nominee, Arthur Sewall.

    1872: This is the most significant case in terms of numbers. Horace Greeley, the Democratic/Liberal Republican candidate, died after the general election but before the Electoral College voted. As a result, 63 of the 66 electors pledged to him cast their votes for other individuals.

    1836: Twenty-three Democratic electors from Virginia refused to vote for Richard M. Johnson for vice president, who had been Martin Van Buren’s running mate.

    1796: Samuel Miles, a Federalist elector from Pennsylvania, voted for Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson instead of the Federalist candidate, John Adams. This was the first instance of a faithless elector.

    Sources:

    fairvote.org,latimes.com,thegreenpapers.com,wikipedia.org

    David Gross

    Follow me at https://x.com/dgapps and https://davidgrossapps.com

  • Hey Rep. Issa, I’ll Take That Bet: Here Are the Democrats Who Will Support Law Enforcement.

    Rep. Issa, regarding your “Over/Under on how many Democrats will support law enforcement,” I’ll happily take the over. You might be guessing not many, but I’m betting on a flicker of common sense from a handful who understand that “condemning violence against law enforcement” should be the easiest bipartisan win of the century.

    My guesstimate? You’ll get about 10 Democrats to vote YES on your resolution.

    Here’s the scouting report on the Democrats most likely to break ranks and join you, and why:

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  • New York’s Final Chapter

    New York’s Final Chapter

    The mythology of New York City is dead. The idea of a thriving metropolis of boundless energy and opportunity is a fantasy. The city has been in a malaise for years, powered by a 24/7 party scene of clubs and consumption, not actual progress. Now, it faces a figure who represents the logical conclusion of this decline. Zohran Mamdani’s political platform is not a plan to fix a struggling city; it is a program of economic suicide designed to pull the plug.

    His proposal to force a $30 minimum wage on the city is a theatrical gesture that will trigger a wave of bankruptcies, not prosperity. To fund this and other schemes, he points to NYC’s AI sector as a cash cow ready for slaughter.

    Let’s be real about this so-called NYC AI sector. It’s bullshit. It is overwhelmingly composed of:

    • Bloated Consulting Firms: Companies like PwC are not core AI developers; they are middlemen who will be the first to be cut in a real economy.
    • Gimmicky “Feature-AI” Companies: Firms like Grammarly and Rokt are not foundational. They build features on top of existing innovation and will be rendered obsolete by the next technological leap.
    • Cash-Burning Startups: The rest are overwhelmingly small-time ventures with no viable business models, destined to go up in flames the second venture capital dries up.
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  • SPECIAL REPORT, PART II: The TikTok Betrayal: Beyond the Trojan Horse, The Rot Within

    SPECIAL REPORT, PART II: The TikTok Betrayal: Beyond the Trojan Horse, The Rot Within

    While the first report detailed the overt threat of TikTok as a weapon of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this second analysis drills deeper into a more insidious danger: the rot within our own institutions that has allowed this threat to fester. The story of TikTok is not just one of foreign aggression, but of domestic failure, political cowardice, and a legal system that has been twisted to protect the adversary. This is a chronicle of the swamp’s self-preservation at the expense of American security.

    The Political Uni-Party and the Propaganda Machine

    The most glaring hypocrisy in the fight against TikTok comes from the very politicians who should be our first line of defense. The Republican and Democratic parties, in their lust for votes, have proven themselves to be two wings of the same Uni-Party, willing to engage with the enemy for political gain.

    • Biden’s Betrayal: Why in the Hell would a sitting U.S. President use a CCP-controlled application? The “Biden-Harris HQ” TikTok account is a slap in the face to the entire U.S. intelligence community. We are told it is run by campaign aides, not the President himself, which is an irrelevant distinction. The account, with its hundreds of thousands of followers, legitimizes the platform and signals to our enemies that our leaders are not serious about the national security threat. We must ask: was the campaign paid? What data is being collected on the American citizens who follow and interact with this account? It is a staggering display of political malpractice.
    • Government-Sponsored Propaganda: The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” buried in a massive appropriations bill, was a weak and performative gesture. Why did it require the Office of Management and Budget to “establish deadlines” for removal? The ban should have been instantaneous. The real question is why these apps were on government devices in the first place. A search reveals a shocking list of U.S. agencies that maintained large TikTok accounts, effectively using a CCP platform to conduct government outreach. The TSA, the National Parks Service, and numerous state-level agencies built substantial followings, normalizing the app and handing the CCP a direct pipeline to American citizens under a veneer of officialdom.
    • The Apology of Jeff Jackson: Look no further than Rep. Jeff Jackson of North Carolina for a profile in political cowardice. After voting for the ban, he posted a now-infamous “apology video” to his massive TikTok following, explaining why he voted the way he did. This act of appeasing a digital mob, potentially inflated by foreign bots, over his duty to national security is contemptible. How does a representative from North Carolina, not a media hub like LA or NYC, amass such a following? How is follower authenticity or monetization even verified by TikTok? This entire ecosystem stinks of fraud, a problem Apple and Google refuse to address, even as new legislation against fake app store activity is debated.
    • The Chinese Embassy in the Halls of Congress: It is a fact that representatives from the Chinese embassy met directly with U.S. congressional staffers to lobby against this bill. This is not normal diplomacy; it is an act of hostile influence. For a foreign adversary to walk the halls of our government and directly pressure our lawmakers is an outrage reminiscent of a spy thriller. This practice, while technically legal, is part of a pattern of corruption that has been allowed to fester in the post-9/11 era, where foreign money and influence have become commonplace in Washington D.C.
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