A startling new analysis of the House of Representative delegations and the U.S. Constitution reveals that if only 37 Republican electors vote against Trump on Monday, then the likelihood that the House would make Mitt Romney our next President runs very high.
Fewer than 10% of the 247 Republicans in the House would need to vote for Romney instead of Trump on January 5 for Romney to win.
Electoral College electors, who meet to vote on December 19, have never rebelled in large numbers against a candidate who won the electoral vote. Yet their legal, and even moral authority to do so is clearly prescribed in the U.S. Constitution. The very same Electoral College system that made it possible for Trump to lose the national election by 2.8 million votes and still be declared the winner also provides the power for the Electoral College electors to vote their conscience.
After all, if our Founding Fathers had wanted a rubber stamp Electoral College process, they would have prescribed an automatic count in our Constitution.
There would have been no need for the electors to exist at all; no need for human electors to get themselves elected and then appear in their state capitols in mid-December to vote in person.
Under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution governing the vote for President, Trump’s failure to win a majority of elector votes (270) on December 19 moves the decision to a determinative vote by the House of Representatives, two weeks later.
Members of the House would then choose from the top three elector vote-getters. This means a choice between Trump, Clinton, and the person who attracts the most other electoral votes. This would likely be Mitt Romney, as long as most of the 37 non-Trump voting Republican electors on December 19 vote for him.
Romney is a logical, highly ethical Republican alternative to Trump, having received a higher percentage of votes (47.2%) when losing his 2012 presidential bid than Trump recently won (46.2%) in his.
Should Trump fail to win 270 elector votes on December 19 and the vote shifts to the House of Representatives on January 5, then the House would vote for President on the constitutionally prescribed basis of one state one vote. Because nearly two-thirds of the state delegations in the House are majority Republicans, the Republican electors who vote their conscience to block Trump on December 19 can rest assured that the House will vote to make a Republican, not a Democrat, our next President.
What’s more, because of the one-vote-per-state vote-counting system in the House, only a small number of House Republicans (less than 10%) would be needed to side make Romney President. This means that 37 or more constitutionally faithful Republican electors can make a courageous vote for Romney, assured that Romney would likely win—and that theirs would not be a wasted protest vote. Instead, they might well be recorded in history as patriotic heroes who effectively stopped an attempted Russian coup of our government and prevented the corruption of our democracy.
My assessment that Romney would likely win a House of Representatives voting contest starts with a basic head count drawn from Wikipedia entries like this for every state. The House of Representatives is currently comprised of 32 states with Republican majorities in their delegations, 15 states with Democratic majorities and three states (Maine, NH and NJ) with split Democratic/Republican delegations.
All the Democratic representatives in these states, as well as in states in which they form minority delegations, could be reliably expected to vote for moderate Mitt Romney to prevent a Trump presidency. House votes for Hillary Clinton, at this stage, would only serve to ensure a Trump victory, and the Democrats know that.
Should a few of the electors who reject Trump also vote for Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine as Vice President, it would open the door to the House voters considering her as Romney’s Vice President. A Romney/Collins alternative would heighten the prospect of replacing Trump in the House, both by securing Maine’s vote, and attracting Republican women representatives interested in making history by selecting the first woman Vice President in U.S. history.
There are four states comprised of only a single Republican House Representative (Alaska, Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming) and two others (Nebraska and Arizona) in which there is one more Republican than Democrat in the delegation. In Mormon-influenced Arizona, only one of five Republican Representatives would need to join four Democrats from the delegation to swing the whole state to a Romney vote.
There are also six states that have a Republican majority comprised of two more Republicans than Democrats. If two members of these delegations voted for Romney, the state would count as a Romney vote. Even if only one switched, it would be a tie, and the state would be lost to Trump in his need for 26 State votes to become President. Ties or Romney votes could also emerge in a number of other states in which a few Republican Representatives joined Democrats from their state in backing Romney.
If a tie results in any state, either Romney or Trump fails to secure 26 states because of such tied vote states, then the Vice President elect becomes our next President.
In addition to the challenge that Trump would face in stopping 10% of the Republican House members from joining a Reject Trump coalition (especially in light of recent disclosures and concerns over unprecedented conflicts of interest), Mitt Romney would be able to draw on enormous behind-the-scenes support from highly influential Mormon Republicans across the country.
The Mormon-dominated House Republican delegation from Utah reportedly voted unanimously against Trump in the November election, according to an October 9 New York Times article headlined, Utah’s Top Mormons in ‘All-Out Revolt’ Against Donald Trump.” Both the Utah state vote, and probably the Mormon-influenced Idaho state vote, could quickly join the Romney count. There are nine Mormon members of the House, and seven in the powerful U.S. Senate.
According to a high-level Utah insider with close contact to Mitt Romney and the key insiders in the Mormon Church, the Mormon leadership would welcome a chance to have the electors replace Donald Trump, a serial liar and adulterer with troubling ties to a fascist foreign government, with Mitt Romney.
A Reject Trump House coalition of the two dozen or so Republican Representatives needed to elect Romney in the House could easily be drawn from Mormons, ethical Christians (both Protestants and Catholics) and the fast-growing number of Republican conservatives shocked by the recent disclosure of a Vladimir Putin-directed hacking of the presidential election.
As explained at length by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers #68,, the Constitution ensures that electors act as conscientious politically independent citizens who could not, by law, be federal officials, to vote only, as Hamilton wrote, with “a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications… by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.”
Trump fails the virtue test by any objective standard. His unwillingness to fully divest from, or even divulge, his many foreign assets and secret foreign loans would make him the most corruptible, inscrutable, constitution-defying American president in history. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution stipulates that no federal office holder can receive compensation from foreign governments. Trump has made it clear that he is preparing to betray the public trust to expand his personal wealth. He has refused to sell his foreign business holdings before taking office, even after Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s Chief Ethics counsel, stated on CNN that, “I don’t think the electoral college can vote for someone to become president if he’s going to be in violation of the Constitution on day one and hasn’t assured us he’s not in violation.”
Alexander Hamilton was explicit when he explained why electors might need to vote against a presidential candidate who had won the most electoral votes in their state. He wrote: “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption . . . chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”
The problem that the elector system was created to prevent is precisely the sort of cabal, or conspiracy, by Russia that our nation’s intelligence experts within the CIA believe happened this election and which, according to America’s deputy national security adviser was authorized by Vladimir Putin himself. Maclean’s, Canada’s most reputable news magazine, just titled a major expose, “Russia’s American Coup.
It is no coincidence that Russia never provided Wikileaks with what were likely troubling emails from the Trump campaign or the Republican National Committee (which U.S. intelligence believes was also hacked). Nor did Wikileaks ever disclose Trump’s tax returns, which David Kay Johnston, America’s most distinguished tax reporter, believes would reveal enormous loans from Russian oligarchs, who have been some of Trump’s largest billionaire investors. Only information that would damage Clinton and help Trump was presented to the American public, based upon Russia’s successful campaign “to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”
Many pundits dismiss the prospect of 37 Republican electors defecting from the Trump camp next Monday. Only one has gone public, in this powerful New York Times Op Ed. But Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig told The Hill this week that he believed that 20 Republican electors were already considering voting for a different Republican. This is not the sort of vote that electors would publicize. Yet a surprising tipping point may arrive by Monday in which 37 or more Republican electors choose alternatives like Romney with the awareness between them that they are among a large enough group to stop Trump from gaining 270 votes.
The clearest Republican expression of support for a compromise elector vote came last week from Michael Cannon, a top analyst at the conservative Cato Institute. In this Washington Post column, Cannon wrote: “Finding 38 Republican electors” to vote for Romney instead of Trump “might then be easier than Democrats think.
“In 2012, Romney won a larger share of the popular vote than Mr. Trump did this year,” he continues. “There are 35 Republican electors from states where Romney got more votes than Trump (Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Utah, Wisconsin), and at least 120 others from states where Romney won a larger share of the vote. That’s more than half of Republican electors.”
No Republican leader has provided as moralistic an objection to Donald Trump as Mitt Romney. In a speech about the danger of a Trump presidency last March, Romney, who has referred to Trump as a “con man,” observed, “I wish everybody in the Republican Party had rejected Mr. Trump and chosen someone else . . . Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny, all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America. . . If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished,” Romney said.
Trump, Romney stated, “creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press. This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.”
The magnificent United States Constitution had the foresight to provide citizens with the powerful safeguard of a fully independent elector system. Its clearly expressed purpose is to protect our democracy against demagogues, despots, corruption and the influence of foreign governments.
The future of our democracy may depend upon the willingness of 37 Republican electors to exercise this power, and this obligation, by voting with their conscience against Donald Trump on December 19th.
