{"id":24575,"date":"2022-12-28T12:33:22","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T20:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=24575"},"modified":"2022-12-28T13:09:30","modified_gmt":"2022-12-28T21:09:30","slug":"pluto-in-capricorn-jamie-raskin-electoral-college-is-a-danger-to-the-american-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/12\/28\/pluto-in-capricorn-jamie-raskin-electoral-college-is-a-danger-to-the-american-people\/","title":{"rendered":"JAMIE RASKIN: ELECTORAL COLLEGE IS A \u2018DANGER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Democratic congressman says recent changes to electoral college laws are unlikely to stop another January 6<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\u2018We
Jamie Raskin: \u2018We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else \u2013 whoever gets the most votes wins.\u2019 Photograph: Michael Reynolds\/EPA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ramon Antonio Vargas<\/a> Mon 26 Dec 2022 (TheGuardian.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent reforms to the laws governing the counting of electoral college votes for presidential races are \u201cnot remotely sufficient\u201d to prevent another attack like the one carried out by Donald Trump supporters<\/a> at the Capitol on January 6, a member of the congressional committee which investigated the uprising has warned.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth \u2013 Trump did it<\/a>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview on CBS\u2019s Face the Nation, the Maryland House representative Jamie Raskin on Sunday renewed calls echoed by others \u2013 especially in the Democratic party to which he belongs \u2013 to let a popular vote determine the holder of the Oval Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else \u2013 whoever gets the most votes wins,\u201d Raskin said. \u201cWe spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year exporting American democracy to other countries, and the one thing they never come back to us with is the idea that, \u2018Oh, that electoral college that you have, that\u2019s so great, we think we will adopt that too\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Trump served one term and lost the Oval Office to Joe Biden<\/a> in 2020, he pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to use his ceremonial role as president of the session where both the Senate and House of Representatives met to certify the outcome of the race and interfere with the counting of the electoral college votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pence refused, as supporters of the defeated Trump stormed the Capitol and threatened to hang the vice-president on the day of that joint congressional session in early 2021. The unsuccessful attack was linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers who ultimately restored order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raskin was one of nine House representatives \u2013 including seven Democrats<\/a> \u2013 who served on a panel investigating the January 6 uprising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The committee recently released an 845-page report<\/a> drawing from more than 1,000 interviews and 10 public hearings that, among other findings, concluded Trump provoked the Capitol attack by purposely disseminating false allegations of fraud pertaining to his defeat as part of a plot to overturn his loss. Committee members also recommended that federal prosecutors file criminal charges against Trump and certain associates of his.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds of Trump\u2019s supporters who participated in the Capitol attack have been charged, with many already convicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raskin said the US insistence on determining presidential winners through the electoral college facilitated the attempt by Trump supporters to keep him in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are so many curving byways and nooks and crannies in the electoral college that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief,\u201d Raskin told Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, adding that the institutions which prevented the Trump-fueled Capitol attack \u201cjust barely\u201d did so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of a government spending package passed on Friday, Congress updated existing federal election laws to clarify that the vice-president\u2019s role in the proceedings to certify the results of a race is just ceremonial and merely to count electoral votes. It also introduced a requirement for 20% of the members of both the House and Senate to object to a state\u2019s electoral college vote outcome when it had previously taken just one legislator from each congressional chamber to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raskin on Sunday said those corrective measures were \u201cnecessary\u201d yet \u201cnot remotely sufficient\u201d because they don\u2019t solve \u201cthe fundamental problem\u201d of the electoral college vote, which in 2000 and 2016 allowed both George W Bush and Trump to win the presidency despite clear defeats in the popular vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another House Democrat \u2013 Dan Goldman of New York \u2013 went on MSNBC\u2019s the Sunday show and made a similar point, saying that US lawmakers \u201cneed to be thinking about ways that we can preserve and protect our democracy that lasts generations\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many Americans are taught in their high school civics classes that the electoral college prevents the handful of most populated areas in the US from determining the presidential winner because more voters live there than in the rest of the country combined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Republican<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

States generally determine their presidential electoral vote winner by the popular vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But most give 100% of their electoral vote allotment to the winner of the popular vote even if the outcome is razor-thin. Critics say that, as a result, votes for the losing candidate end up not counting in any meaningful way, allowing for situations where the president is supported by only a minority of the populace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, such scenarios are preceded by a convoluted process that most people don\u2019t understand and whose integrity can be assailed in the court of public opinion by partisans with agendas. That happened ahead of the Capitol attack even though Trump lost both the popular and electoral college votes to Biden handily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think,\u201d Raskin said, \u201cthat the electoral college \u2026 has become a danger not just to democracy, but to the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic congressman says recent changes to electoral college laws are unlikely to stop another January 6 Ramon Antonio Vargas Mon 26 Dec 2022 (TheGuardian.com) Recent reforms to the laws governing the counting of electoral college votes for presidential races are \u201cnot remotely sufficient\u201d to prevent another attack like the one carried out… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24575"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24577,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24575\/revisions\/24577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}