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According to Michigan GOP Rep. Paul Mitchell, who said he spoke days ago with Norman Shinkle, one of the two GOP members on the board, Shinkle indicated last week he would vote against certifying the election results until an investigation is completed so as to push a delay even though there is no evidence of fraud or malfeasance that would necessitate such a move.

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..."If there were to be a 2-2 split on the State Board of Canvassers, it would then go to the Michigan Supreme Court to determine what their response would be, what their order would be," [Michigan Republican and House Speaker Lee] Chatfield said on Fox News.

"If they didn't have an order that it be certified, well now we have a constitutional crisis in the state of Michigan. It's never occurred before," Chatfield said.

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After appearing to acquit themselves rationally following a controversial White House meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday, Michigan’s lawmakers [visiting DC] were photographed celebrating maskless and downing pricey Dom Perignon champagne in the Trump International Hotel.

Voters erupted, and “Dom Perignon” was quickly trending on Twitter. The bottles go for $500 to $950 each at the hotel, and if it was a treat from Trump, they were likely on an expense account paid for by taxpayers — state, or federal.

Michigan, meanwhile, suffered through 10,000 new cases of COVID-19 Friday — and 53 deaths.

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...when Trump himself flies Michigan’s top lawmakers to Washington and ... someone is buying them $500 bottles of Dom Pérignon in the name of appointing Trump electors in a state Biden won by 150,000 votes, how is this not election tampering at the felony level?

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cbelt3
Because the Trump administration has taught us that the Founder's assumption that government would be filled by men of studied reason was a false hope.

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space-time
get rid of the electoral college. Popular vote!

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mattkime
I've also heard it as a practical described as a practical communication solution. Apparently considered easier than delivering vote totals.

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Carnos Jax

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cbelt3
Because the Trump administration has taught us that the Founder's assumption that government would be filled by men of studied reason was a false hope.

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space-time
get rid of the electoral college. Popular vote!

These two statements illustrate the failings of the Electoral College. The EC was founded as a compromise solution to two competing ideologies (and it had nothing to do with smaller states rights). On one hand you had Congress advocating that they elect the President, since the people couldn't always be trusted to pick sane leaders. Of course on the other hand, the people wanted the sole right to elect the President. Thus the EC was born as a compromise. The founding fathers figured if the people picked a dangerous idiot for President, the EC would safeguard the office and pick and override with someone else. Of course, that didn't happen in 2016....thus the original and sole intent of the Electoral College FAILED MISERABLY. So if the EC hasn't worked as originally intended, why keep it?

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RgrF

No logical reason but as long as one party or the other sees it as advantageous to them, it will remain in it's current form.

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Carnos Jax
These two statements illustrate the failings of the Electoral College. The EC was founded as a compromise solution to two competing ideologies (and it had nothing to do with smaller states rights). On one hand you had Congress advocating that they elect the President, since the people couldn't always be trusted to pick sane leaders. Of course on the other hand, the people wanted the sole right to elect the President. Thus the EC was born as a compromise. The founding fathers figured if the people picked a dangerous idiot for President, the EC would safeguard the office and pick and override with someone else. Of course, that didn't happen in 2016....thus the original and sole intent of the Electoral College FAILED MISERABLY. So if the EC hasn't worked as originally intended, why keep it?

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Commentators today tend to downplay the extent to which race and slavery contributed to the Framers’ creation of the Electoral College, in effect whitewashing history: Of the considerations that factored into the Framers’ calculus, race and slavery were perhaps the foremost.

Of course, the Framers had a number of other reasons to engineer the Electoral College. Fearful that the president might fall victim to a host of civic vices—that he could become susceptible to corruption or cronyism, sow disunity, or exercise overreach—the men sought to constrain executive power consistent with constitutional principles such as federalism and checks and balances. The delegates to the Philadelphia convention had scant conception of the American presidency—the duties, powers, and limits of the office. But they did have a handful of ideas about the method for selecting the chief executive. When the idea of a popular vote was raised, they griped openly that it could result in too much democracy. With few objections, they quickly dispensed with the notion that the people might choose their leader.

But delegates from the slaveholding South had another rationale for opposing the direct election method, and they had no qualms about articulating it: Doing so would be to their disadvantage. Even James Madison, who professed a theoretical commitment to popular democracy, succumbed to the realities of the situation. The future president acknowledged that “the people at large was in his opinion the fittest” to select the chief executive. And yet, in the same breath, he captured the sentiment of the South in the most “diplomatic” terms:

There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.

Behind Madison’s statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. Because of its considerable, nonvoting slave population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system. The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president, one that could leverage the three-fifths compromise, the Faustian bargain they’d already made to determine how congressional seats would be apportioned. With about 93 percent of the country’s slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South’s congressional delegation by 42 percent. When the time came to agree on a system for choosing the president, it was all too easy for the delegates to resort to the three-fifths compromise as the foundation. The peculiar system that emerged was the Electoral College.

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It must do so. The certification process is a ministerial one. Board members are required to sign off, provided they have received the final canvass from each of Michigan’s 83 counties — and they have.

A refusal by the board to certify the results now would risk disenfranchising the state’s voters — an unconscionable outcome antithetical to American democracy.

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pdq
That the Republican board members are even considering not doing so is corrosive to our democracy.

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Acer
EC electors should assigned to a state by population. Let the small-pop states get a small handicap if you wish, but not the ridiculous disparity we have now.

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PeterB
As I've said many times here before, the EC failed us all in 2016. But to me, that doesn't mean that we should necessarily do away with it -- it's that ANY representational form of government is inherently flawed.

An old article, but worth reading ex post facto, in light of what's happened in the time since the article was written: [www.theatlantic.com]

... remember, faithless electors could go either way. If they had flipped and gone with Clinton in 2016, it's still also possible that they could flip and go Trump in 2020.

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rjmacs

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PeterB
As I've said many times here before, the EC failed us all in 2016. But to me, that doesn't mean that we should necessarily do away with it -- it's that ANY representational form of government is inherently flawed.

An old article, but worth reading ex post facto, in light of what's happened in the time since the article was written: [www.theatlantic.com]

... remember, faithless electors could go either way. If they had flipped and gone with Clinton in 2016, it's still also possible that they could flip and go Trump in 2020.

Not really.

The elitism embedded in the myth of independent electors is hardly an answer to the popular vote. Also, there haven't been any cases where the winner of the popular vote should have been prevented from taking office by a hijacking of the EC. The only time this is an issue is when the winner of the popular vote is deprived the office by the EC.

Plus - faithless electors can be punished by states, according to a recent unanimous SCotUS decision, and they can replace electors who fail to represent their state's will with ones who will.

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PeterB
There's a difference between "should" and "could" here ... it would have been possible for faithless electors to give the election to Clinton in 2016, and frankly they had a constitutional duty to do so, which they shirked.

And yes, they can be punished by the states -- but that wouldn't be the first time that a patriot has had to pay a personal price for doing the right thing by their country. That they didn't do the right thing in 2016 had enormous consequences for this country in terms of the economy and lives lost.

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rjmacs

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Acer
EC electors should assigned to a state by population. Let the small-pop states get a small handicap if you wish, but not the ridiculous disparity we have now.

Just as hard to accomplish as abolition. Requires a constitutional amendment.