Eddv posted...
The plan was for Mike Pence to, as Vice President, refuse to certify the electoral votes cast in Georgia Arizona and Wisconsin on account of "fraud" and thus force the election to a house vote he would have won.
Pence refused and an angry mob was whipped up to try to force him, he STILL refused and so that mob stormed the capital.
Legit only avoided this outcome because Pence got a phone call from Dan Quayle of all people begging him not to do it
A situation neatly avoided if more votes simply wins the election.
That scenario isn't because of the Electoral College, it's because of the method for aggregating votes from different states. If you had the election decided by a national popular vote, Pence would still have been opening envelopes containing the vote tallies from the different states. Only it would be even more prone to abuse at this stage of the counting because any red state could have submitted a fraudulent vote tally asserting, let's say, that the entire state population had voted for Trump when it was really a 55/45 thing with 70% turnout.
What would Pence be supposed to do when presented with such a hypothetical vote tally? Count it anyway because his job is only ministerial? Refuse to count it because of obvious fraud, opening the door to other VPs rejecting legitimate vote tallies they don't like? With the EC, the margin within a state doesn't matter so this kind of scheme wouldn't achieve anything.
September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!