Soldier dies while trying to vote during Civil War

[David Lockmiller]

"Vote-Stealing Battle in Florida Portends More Distrust in System for 2020"

New York Times - Nov. 19, 2018 edition

The chaotic images out of Florida’s election recount last week — the brigade of Washington lawyers, the déjà vu meltdown of the tallying in Broward County, the vitriolic charges and countercharges — have prompted flashbacks among the electorate of the 2000 presidential election.

Yet to the combatants in both parties fighting over impossibly tight races for governor and senate, the 2018 election was less about revisiting past political traumas than about setting the stage for the bitter 2020 campaign ahead. The legal and political skirmishing in the state, Republicans and Democrats say, has been an ominous dry run for messaging and tactics about fraud and vote-stealing that threaten to further undermine confidence in the electoral system.

“If what’s going on now is transposed to a presidential election, it would tax our system in a way that is much greater than what happened in 2000,” said Edward Foley, a professor of election law at Ohio State University and one of the country’s pre-eminent scholars on recounts.

JMadonna correctly pointed out in his post made today: "If there is a chance to steal an election from an evenly divided state - that chance will be taken."

Two years from this month, another presidential election will take place. And, based on the 2016 presidential election popular vote results for the nation, the popular vote in Florida in 2020 for President may well determine the Electoral College vote outcome for President of this nation.

That result would be an "unfair and unjust" presidential election and that is why I believe a presidential election amendment to the Constitution, based on the popular vote of this "E pluribus unum" nation of states as a whole, is now necessary.

There is no sustainable counter argument. Roger's post is not a counter argument, but rather an observation that such an amendment will not be ratified by the requisite number of states:

"Congress and the states would never approve abandoning the Electoral College because many smaller states would not vote for it, and the 2/3 vote in Congress and 3/4 vote of the states (needed for an amendment) would be impossible to achieve. I just do not see enough of the smaller states abandoning their extra electoral power."

Such a beneficent act must be willingly made by a few states. For the well-being of the nation as a whole, I trust that this act will be done in time.