Monday, December 14, 2020

Watching the Electoral College Vote

Update 12:00 pm - Electors in the six key states where Trump challenged the results have cast their ballots for Biden.

Today the Electoral College casts their vote, one person for each of a state's electoral votes in the antiquated electoral college. You can watch it here on WaPo, and here on CBS. CNN has other suggestions if neither of these work for you. 

It's going to be a long, all-day process. I just turned it on right now and am watching Michigan in their statehouse, and so far two people have earnestly sung to the high glory of something, and I've lost count of how many people have begged their gods to treat them well and not bring fire and germs and total destruction upon them as he clearly seems to prefer. Now the politicians are thanking one another with copious honorifics, and everyone's now giving it up for the governor. Everyone's wearing masks, because it's a state of decent people. (At least these Democrats that lead the statehouse.) Clearly the state sees this as their time to shine in front of the country -- the guv just mentioned the vaccine left Michigan in trucks yesterday, and said "Our state is at the center of the world right now." I guess, if the trucks are also delivering to London and Paris and Zagreb and Cairo. (Of course, they're not delivering to any poor country, which the governor didn't dare mention.) All in all this process is taking a god awful amount of time and is boring anyway, at least to me, and no way I'm watching any other state. You might well disagree, of course, so please watch if you do.

Wisconsin and Georgia have cast all their electoral votes for Biden, as their voters directed. It's rare that this is ever a "faithless" elector, who votes in opposition to the voters of her district. Very rare -- these electors seem to take their jobs very seriously, even in cases where serious pressure has been applied to them, as happened from some southern segregationists in the 1960 election to keep JFK out of the presidency. 

By the way, both Bill and Hillary Clinton are electors for New York State. So far the electoral count is 171-133 for Biden.   

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