The Electoral Votes have been Cast

by Matt Erickson, PatriotCorps

(Dec. 15, 2020) — The Electors met yesterday in their respective States and cast their ballots for President and Vice President.

While the votes won’t be officially tallied until January 6^th, credible media reports inform us that the Biden/Harris ticket surpassed the required threshold of 270 Electoral votes needed to win the election.

With their favored candidate failing to reach the majority of Electoral votes, many patriots now hold out hope for members of Congress to dispute the formal count on January 6^th. These patriots want the House of Representatives to throw out the tally, arguing election fraud, so the vote may be decided by the House of Representatives, where each State gets one vote.

The critical point here is whether the House may investigate a final decision of Electors, when the Electors (however chosen) have met their obligation and cast a majority of votes for one candidate.

Proponents of this view cannot cite any specific clause supporting their theory, for the Constitution specifies the States may act through their Representatives in the House only when Electors fail to cast a majority of votes for one candidate. If a sufficient number of States had refused to seat their Electors, because of election fraud, then it would have been possible that neither candidate would have reached the threshold and the vote then would have proceeded to the House of Representatives, under the 12^th Amendment.

It must be noted that the Constitution, in the clauses and amendments which touch upon the topic, leaves it up to the State legislatures, individually, to determine how to choose their Electors, as the legislature sees fit.

It is pertinent to note that the U.S. Constitution would not be violated if one legislature used a Ouija Board to determine its Electors, another used darts, and another drew straws.

How could the U.S. Constitution specify members of Congress have the power to examine how State legislatures choose their Electors, when the U.S. Constitution itself gives legislatures unbridled control of the matter, even arbitrarily, it would seem?

It seems counterintuitive to say the Constitution allows members of Congress to inquire into the legitimacy of individual State elections for President, when the Constitution doesn’t even require States to hold a popular election for determining its Presidential Electors.

Most States didn’t even hold popular elections for President until 1824, with Colorado in 1876 being the last State to determine its Electoral votes by a direct decision of its State legislature.

To argue that the Constitution—which explicitly prohibits members of Congress and federal officials from serving as Electors—nevertheless empowers those same members to examine the Elector’s choice (when Electors reach their majority threshold), places members of Congress in a position superior to the Electors, even when the Constitution otherwise directly prohibits members from acting until a very specific condition is met.

Only when Electors fail to reach a majority of votes for a single candidate does the Constitution specifically empower Representatives to act through their respective States, specifying an alternate system where Representatives may cast their State’s single vote.

The fundamental point in the 2020 Presidential Election, is that the States picked their Electors, by a method of their own choosing, and those Electors have now cast their votes. Since it seems likely that the tally broke the 270-vote threshold, then upon that final tally, then the choice will have been made, for better or worse.

That different Electors would have cast their votes differently isn’t the point. Those who answer fraud was involved in the election necessarily miss the real and primary fraud that has been long occurring under their noses, to concentrate upon a secondary fraud.

The most significant fraud is the contrary idea that election winners and appointed officers may steer American government in a direction of their own choosing, even contrary to express constitutional mandates. If you are intent on routing out fraud—and you should be—then concentrate first on the primary fraud that allowed the creation of a peculiar circumstance where a secondary fraud may then be a significant factor.

Indeed, if the power available to all those elected or appointed to positions of federal power is properly restricted, then who happens to win elections or gain political appointments is of only minor concern.

The moral of this story is not for us to follow blindly our opponents’ lead and place all our faith and efforts in elections and Democracy—including even twisting the Constitution to fit our wishes—but to concentrate on the heart of the matter.

And, the heart of the matter is the false concept that federal servants may become our political masters; that government agents may do as they please, without effective restraint.

Patriots looking to secure liberty and limited government must place our faith in our Republican Form of Government that our Constitution expressly guarantees us—a government of delegated powers, that may be exercised using only necessary and proper means.

With every person exercising federal authority first swearing an oath to support the Constitution, citizens of all political persuasions are best protected from the arbitrary actions of those empowered, by enforcing the constitutional limitations on federal power.

In other words, instead of spending all one’s time being consumed with elections and Democracy, true Republicans must learn to discover how our political adversaries ever found a clever way to sever the Constitution’s mandates and limitations, and seemingly act independent of our supreme Law of the Land.

The key to reclaiming a free future lies not in elections, or Democracy, but in restricting all federal servants only to their allowed actions, implemented using necessary and proper means.

Go ahead and clean up elections, but do not become consumed by them.

The Constitution doesn’t spend all that much effort on voting and elections, because everyone who wins elections is necessarily limited in their federal powers and governing capabilities.

It is our job as patriots to discover how federal servants ever became our political masters—that is the real fraud that must be learned, in order to restore our American Republic.

Thankfully, that is much easier to accomplish than one may otherwise think, once one starts looking in the right place.

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Matt Erickson is the author of 11 public domain books on the topic, including his latest, Trapped by Political Desire: The Treatise.  He is the Founder and President of PatriotCorps.org.