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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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On the threat-to-democracy front I think the obvious angle is that Trump tried to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election and regularly disparages the legitimacy of any election he loses. Forget the riot on Jan 6th. Here are some simple facts, not reasonably in dispute:

None of that seems much different than the democratic campaign to encourage faithless electors in 2016 though? Both were bad, to be clear; neither shattered the republic. (nor ended up having any impact on the results)

In addition to the various faithless elector attempts on 2016, I'll point to the 1960 Hawaii snafu, and where overturning the first set of validly-issued electors (... by unanimous consent as argued by one Presidential Candidate in his role as Vice President) was accepted.

I don't understand the relevance. Trump's alternate slate of electors were never certified by the governor of their state. It's also important that counting the alternate slate in 1960 was done with the consent of the joint session. The Electoral Count Act contains specific provisions allowing members of Congress to challenge electoral college votes. Trump's plan relied on Pence having unilateral authority because the majority Democratic House was obviously not going to agree to count Trump's alternate electors.