Note: This short article only addresses the issue of the state legislatures' replacement of the popular vote selection of  Presidential Electors in six swing states whose votes are needed to elect the Democrat's Biden/Harris ticket in 2020.  Republicans are also introducing many more legal blockades in the State and Federal Courts to delay the counting of or actually suppress the votes for Biden/Harris across many states.

1. Swing States that lean heavily to Biden on September 27, 2020 include: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, Minnesota

Note: If these state vote for Biden, along with the other heavily democratic states,  this would give him 279 electoral votes even if Trump wins all of the remaining undecided states: Florida, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa and Ohio.  At the moment, only Pennsylvania seems to be a problem with Biden holding only a 5.0+% lead but several targeted voter suppression actions in Pennsylvania, initiated by the Republicans, are working their way through a variety of state level and federal courts.  Those issues require a different set of arguments about deadlines, envelopes and admin details and are not discussed in this short note.

2. The Drama: Recently, news pundits have pointed out that the Constitution gives the State Legislatures control over who selects their state’s Presidential Electors who will then cast their votes for the Presidential candidates. There are rumors that Republican State Legislatures, in certain swing states, are considering overriding their current lawful selection process by vote of the people and creating their own slate of pro-Trump electors for submission to the US Senate.  In other words, they may try to select their own electors that would vote to elect the President and ignore the Nov 3 popular vote.

3. The Rules: Such a process would require rescinding the current state laws in these swing states that says the selection of electors is by popular vote and then replacing that existing law with one that says the legislature will select the slate of electors.  This could be a big challenge in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Minnesota, which have Republican Legislatures but Democratic governors.  Even if the Legislatures passes a new law allowing them to overrule the voters electoral college choice on Nov 3, 2020, the Governor in each state would likely veto the new law, leaving in place the November 3, popular vote Presidential elector choices.  The Governor could then proceed with the certification of the elector slate that selected Biden/Harris over Trump/Pence by a majority vote.   In each of these five states, the Republican legislature does not have a 2/3 majority in either of the two legislative branches required to overturn the Governor’s veto. In New Hampshire the Democratically controlled legislature would not likely pass a law overriding the people’s majority vote selected elector slate, which currently favors the Democrats Biden/Harris.

4. The Election: This would leave Biden/Harris with 279 electoral votes and would elect Biden as President.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just eliminate the Electoral College and implement a more democratic majority vote system like we use in every other election in the USA and is used by every other democracy in the world for all their elections!