Cancelling the election

The Electoral College system is vulnerable to political attack

This article was originally written in the lead-up to the 2020 election. For those of you reading it after Election day but before electors meet and vote, see the section about retroactive rules changes.

There are three different ways in which state governments can steal a state’s slate of electors from a candidate who won more votes than their opponent. First, and most simply, they can cancel the election, as happened in New Jersey in 1812. Second, they can certify results that are known to be inaccurate, irregular, and incomplete; the 1876 and 2000 elections were both decided on the basis of counts known to be inaccurate. Third, they could simply order electors to change their votes; in Colorado in 2016, the state successfully compelled electors’ votes.

In 1812, New Jersey had two sets of elections scheduled: State level elections for the legislature in October, with federal elections following in November.

Federalists won a narrow majority of seats in the state legislature. On October 27th, 1812, the new majority was seated. On November 3rd, 1812, less than a week into their session, they passed a law that robbed voters of their next opportunity to vote.

The upcoming presidential election was canceled outright. House elections were postponed from November to January in order to allow the Federalists time to gerrymander the congressional districts in their favor. This early gerrymandering effort won the Federalists a 4–2 majority of New Jersey’s congressional delegation.

Related posts:

As the November Beta release of the LGO Markets exchange platform is approaching, we figured it was the right time to invite LGO’s team members from both Bordeaux and New York City to participate in…

Coping with the world around us today is like navigating through a rudderless, crumbling universe of chaos. In this unprecedented and bizarre moment of history full of disquiet and hardship, are we…

This past couple of weeks, the press has been talking about how few Amazon Alexa users have actually purchased products using the voice platform. Voicebot summarized voice shopping use among smart…