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Legally, the state legislature cannot override the popular vote for president. For any council or legislative body of a state, taking such a step, in practice, means appointing the electorate of the president in that state himself, in open defiance of the results of the popular vote. More clearly, the implementation of this plan means that the legislature in an absolute state won by Vice President Joe Biden by popular vote, will pass a law or a resolution that designates the members of the Electoral College who will in turn cast their votes for Trump, and this matter would change the outcome in favor of the latter.
Most constitutional experts in the United States agree that under the authority of state legislatures, which determine how voters are appointed, the assembly can theoretically decide, one day before the election, to abolish the popular vote in interest of the presidential electorate, and then work to appoint the latter directly. . In order to cut off any state that might, on its own initiative, initiate actions contrary to the state, Congress enacted a law titled “Unified National Election Day,” which prohibited the selection of voters based on elections held. place or laws passed after Election Day. In other words, according to the constitutional time clause required by federal law, the last day the legislature could decide that any state designate the electors to select the president is November 3, 2020. Since this The date has passed and the elections have been held, the power of the legislature The state’s method of appointing high-level voters has stopped changing. Trump supporters can argue that there are contingencies, but federal law includes a limited exception: If the state tries to hold elections as scheduled, but those elections fail, the law allows the state legislature to create a backup system for choosing voters. What needs to be considered here, however, is that this exception has never been used in American history, so it is not entirely clear what the “failure” of the presidential election means.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits states from stripping the rights of their citizens
More than the above, there is a second independent reason why state councils or legislatures cannot cancel popular vote results after Election Day. Doing so would violate the constitutional rights of the electorate. In this context, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits states from stripping their citizens of rights without following due process of law. One of these rights, of course, is the right to vote. The Supreme Constitutional Court has made it clear, many times, that the constitutional right to vote not only means the right to put the vote in a box, but also the right to count this vote to determine the electoral results. Consequently, a state legislature annulling popular elections would be tantamount to refusing to count the votes of citizens. Furthermore, the constitution unequivocally prohibits depriving eligible voters of the right to vote, much less those of an entire state.
So what if the state legislature violated the constitution and federal law, ignored court orders, and worked to appoint the state’s presidential electors? According to the rules for the counting of electoral votes, the state sends two sets of votes: the first set is the one cast by the voters elected on the day of the election, and the second is the one cast by the voters chosen by another method, i.e. , Appointment. The rules of the Electoral College give decisive effect to the votes of the first group and require that those votes be counted without other votes being counted. This will thwart any attempted illegal violation in the elections.
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