In a well functioning version of the US that would mean Congress refuses to certify their state election results.
So now we get into a world where the party in control of congress gets to pick and choose based on whether they agree with the results from that given state. So in this scenario, a likely outcome would have been congress rejecting the electors from Maine, Colorado, and Illinois for daring to ban Trump, and congress happily certifying electors from red states that banned Biden.
This most recent impeachment is strong evidence that fair administration of rules and procedures is the furthest thing from their minds, and it’s all a power play. The last thing congress needs is more well recognized levers to manipulate. Unless of course that lever requires 2/3rds majority, which seems to be fairly hard to get unless everyone really agrees. However, in that case, they’d never pull it on someone like Trump, with half the congress compelled to 100% stand behind him no matter what.
So, it actually gets even more arcane than that. If enough elections are refused, Congress elects the president in a ballot by state caucuses. So, for example, all Representatives and Senators for Arizona would vote among themselves to see who Arizona votes for.
This is all contingent on actual representation. If we had continued the ratio of representation from the 1790’s we’d have ~10,000 representatives. Even at half that we’d have far more independence from party discipline.
Everything that’s happening now is the result of self inflicted wounds from the 1900’s. In this specific case Congress limited the size of the House of Representatives in the period between the world wars. Their official reason was because it would be hard to fit more representatives in the Capitol building. Like there wasn’t (and isn’t) a way to cast votes without being in the same building…
So now we get into a world where the party in control of congress gets to pick and choose based on whether they agree with the results from that given state. So in this scenario, a likely outcome would have been congress rejecting the electors from Maine, Colorado, and Illinois for daring to ban Trump, and congress happily certifying electors from red states that banned Biden.
This most recent impeachment is strong evidence that fair administration of rules and procedures is the furthest thing from their minds, and it’s all a power play. The last thing congress needs is more well recognized levers to manipulate. Unless of course that lever requires 2/3rds majority, which seems to be fairly hard to get unless everyone really agrees. However, in that case, they’d never pull it on someone like Trump, with half the congress compelled to 100% stand behind him no matter what.
So, it actually gets even more arcane than that. If enough elections are refused, Congress elects the president in a ballot by state caucuses. So, for example, all Representatives and Senators for Arizona would vote among themselves to see who Arizona votes for.
This is all contingent on actual representation. If we had continued the ratio of representation from the 1790’s we’d have ~10,000 representatives. Even at half that we’d have far more independence from party discipline.
Everything that’s happening now is the result of self inflicted wounds from the 1900’s. In this specific case Congress limited the size of the House of Representatives in the period between the world wars. Their official reason was because it would be hard to fit more representatives in the Capitol building. Like there wasn’t (and isn’t) a way to cast votes without being in the same building…