(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)
(The following opinion article was updated, as of Sat. June 22, 2024: 6:00am ET)
The concept of one presidential candidate cobbling together alternative delegates after a presidential election has occurred in at least three presidential races in US history. But only in 2020 did the media begin labeling alternative electors as being “fake” electors.
And only after Donald Trump empaneled such electors did politically motivated prosecutors deem them illegal.
The fact is, it is not illegal for a presidential candidate to designate alternative electors in a state where the election results are in dispute.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/contentious-election-1876
However, our mainstream media, which is consumed by its left wing bias and Trump Derangement Syndrome, has gone to a new level of advocacy by definitively stating that the establishment of such alternative electors is illegal. Thus, they disingenuously label them as fake.
Apparently, they never labeled the alternative electors empaneled in the 1960 presidential election in Hawaii or in various states in the election of 1876 as being illegal or fake. The Hawaii count, originally called for Richard Nixon, was overturned on a recount allowing the alternative electors cobbled together by John F. Kennedy to cast the state’s electoral votes for the Massachusetts senator.
By labeling the designation of alternative electors as fake, the fake media automatically gives the reader the false impression that the process of creating alternative electors is an illegal scheme designed to incite an insurrection.
You may have a problem with the concept of alternative electors, but if you don’t like it, the remedy is to seek a change in the United States Constitution and federal law, not to seek the imprisonment of attorneys or the party faithful who latch onto this perfectly legal process sanctioned by the federal law.
There were many things within the Constitution - a document crafted almost 250 years ago - that seem outdated and anti-egalitarian today.
Let’s not forget that many of the founders wanted to place a check on popular will, and therefore had senators chosen not directly by the voters but by the members of the House of Representative. That outdated concept was jettisoned to the ash heap of history with the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.
We also might not like that members of Congress have the authority to reject the certification of a particular state’s election results. But, quite obviously, this process is sanctioned by the Constitution and federal law.
The mainstream Democratic media outlets love to give the uninformed reader the impression that failing to certify an election is an illegal unpatriotic act . . . but only when it’s exercised by a Republican, as was the case in 2020. Little to nothing is said about the numerous times Democrats have exercised this prerogative. The most ironic and noteworthy being Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. who was a lead prosecutor in the Trump January 6th hearings after having objected to certifying the results of Trump's 2016 election win.
As noted above, we may dislike this process, but if we want to change it, alter the law or get a constitutional amendment; don’t try to imprison those who properly exercise this option that has been legally available to others for two centuries.
Which brings us back to the so-called "fake" electors.
If there is a dispute over a state’s election results, one of the candidates may cobble together a slate of electors different from those promoted by the state legislature.
But here’s the kicker that the biased media almost always omits.
The alternative slate of electors do not automatically rule the day.
They don’t displace the electors put forth by the state legislature to the electoral college.
Instead, the matter is left to the courts to decipher. Once the courts have spoken, the slate deemed valid will be able to cast its votes at the electoral college gathering, and the other slate will not.
This is exactly what Attys. Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman had advised Donald Trump after a number of questions arose regarding the sanctity of elections in various states ranging from Arizona to Wisconsin to Georgia.
Neither Chesebro, nor Eastman, nor presidential Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ever said that this slate of alternative electors would run roughshod on Capitol Hill and take the reins of power. They understood, however, that the law required that this alternative slate be in place prior to the court challenge or winning in court would be worthless.
The opportunity to have created the slate would have passed weeks earlier.
The concept was more fully apparent in the 1876 election of President Samuel Tilden.
Oh, wait.
Tilden, who won the popular vote, never became president because congressional supporters of rival Rutherford B. Hayes had challenged the validity of voting outcomes in a number of states.
That dispute never made it to the judicial process since members of Congress formulated the Great Compromise of 1876 where Congress agreed to make Hayes the president while agreeing to end northern occupation of the south after the Civil War.
The process might have been uglier than making sausage, but it was entirely legal.
No one was indicted.
The ultimately victorious electors were never disparaged as being fake.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a New York State assemblyman, and host of "The Steve Levy Radio Show." He is the author of "Solutions to America’s Problems" and "Bias in the Media." www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com. Read more of Steve Levy's reports — Here.
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