Freedom Caucus Chair’s Anti-Democratic Musings
Floating the idea that NC should just award its EVs to Trump.
![](https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/North-Carolina-570x428.jpg)
This is a story for a few days ago that was still sitting in an open tab. On the one hand, this is just one guy musing about something that isn’t going to happen. On the other, it is a member of the US House of Representatives with a prominent position musing about the disenfranchisement of an entire state. Given the way the Republican Party has been evolving, it seems a noteworthy story.
Via Politico: Freedom Caucus leader endorses radical proposal for North Carolina to hand its electoral votes to Trump.
The chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus says the North Carolina Legislature should consider allocating the state’s presidential electors to Donald Trump even before votes are counted in the swing state.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said Thursday that such a step by North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Legislature “makes a lot of sense” given the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in the western part of the state. Counties in that region are expected to vote heavily for Trump.
[…]
“You statistically can go and say, ‘Look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been,’” Harris said during an exchange with a speaker at the dinner. “Which would be — if I were in the Legislature — enough to go, ‘Yeah, we have to convene the Legislature. We can’t disenfranchise the voters.’”
The potential affects on voters in North Carolina are real and there is no way to guarantee that they will all have easy access to the ballot box. The solution, however, is to do what all the hurricane-affected states are doing in terms of creating conditions on the ground for citizens to vote.
Members of Congress should not be pontificating about having the state legislature assign the electoral voters (which, I would note, is constitutional and underscores, yet again, the flaws in the way we elect the president).
Side note: the most populated area the Helene hit was Asheville, which is a heavily Democratic locale.
Regardless, as CBS News reported yesterday: Hurricane Helene’s devastation hasn’t stopped western North Carolinians from voting early.
election workers’ swift pivot to emergency measures and coordination with state administrators in the immediate aftermath of Helene have resulted in a relatively smooth early voting process for residents in the 25 FEMA-designated disaster counties. Statewide, more than 2 million cast their ballots within the first week of early voting in the battleground state.
In years gone by I would probably have ignored this story, but part of what we have here is a person in elected office listening to a kook. And we saw how that played out in 2020 (see, e.g., Powell, Sidney or Eastman, John, to name but two).
Harris’ comments were in response to a keynote speech by Ivan Raiklin, a pro-Trump activist who has long embraced a radical strategy of state legislatures guaranteeing Trump’s reelection if they deem the 2024 election tainted by fraud and corruption. Raiklin posted a video of his full speech on X as well as a separate clip of his exchange with Harris.
In his remarks, Raiklin argued that in addition to North Carolina, Republican-controlled legislatures in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia and Wisconsin could take similar steps by meeting on Election Day and awarding their electors to Trump. Harris asked Raiklin how he could justify his plan in other states that were unaffected by storm damage.
“It looks like just a power play,” Harris said. “In North Carolina, it’s legitimate. There are a lot of people that aren’t going to get to vote and it may make the difference in that state.”
Spoiler: it would be a power play (and an anti-democratic one) in NC as well.
With ‘EV’ in the headline, I initially thought you meant, ‘electric vehicles’.
Which are probably A-Okay with Trump now that Elon is pimping for him.
In any case, we always knew that ‘Freedom Caucus’ meant the opposite.
“In years gone by I would probably have ignored this story…”
Those years are well and truly gone, and the sooner we wake up to that, the better. No more taking intelligence or honesty for granted.
When I read “1984” as a teenager, I apparently lacked the imagination to consider that some folks would consider it an instruction manual.
Freedom Caucus, indeed.
File this under ‘another good reason to get rid of the EC’
@Jc: And the Freedom Caucus.
Given that hurricanes and such are considered “acts of GOD,” it would seem that Representative Harris might ask why GOD decided to prevent these people from voting.
Or am I going about this “GOD is in control” thing wrong again? My pastor warned me about just reading the Bible and interpreting the meaning myself when I was a teenager.![🙁](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/svg/1f641.svg)
Someone could point out to Rep. Andy Harris that the most persistent “example” Trump provides for how the 2020 election was stolen from him was the efforts of state election officials to reduce disenfranchisement without legislative changes, even during emergencies. (TFG provided this argument as the “top” or “easy one” when Joe Rogan asked for examples of 2020 rigging on his podcast last week.) Certainly, Trump wouldn’t want election officials to use their delegated powers like they did for COVID in this case with Helene.
I was going to call out the Republicans on the inconsistency here, but my son pointed out to me that GOP pols are actually consistently being true to the law – the conservative law – “Wilhoit’s Law”:
In view of the arson of ballot drop boxes in OR, WA, and AZ, the electoral votes of those states should just be awarded to the Democrats’ slate.
As a resident of New Hampshire, a hearty, full-throated, F*&K OFF Raiklin, from me.
I detest these types of “musings.” Yes, let’s disenfranchise a ton of people, just because the legislature is controlled by Republicans.
@Scott F.: Andy Harris. Sheesh. FWIW, Ol’ Andy is pretty representative of the Maryland Republican Party, which is run through with a “Friends of the Confederacy” level of racist fantasy group think. When I moved back into Maryland one of my county reps was an official in the local chapter of the”League of the South” (in case you’re not familiar, it’s an organization that doesn’t accept the outcome of the Civil War and calls for immediate succession of the Southern States) and was defended by all levels of Republican Leadership, either embracing the toxic racism, or with an “Well, I don’t know anything about that but I know he’s a man of good character” type of foot shuffling.
Larry Hogan is very much of an anomaly in the Maryland GOP. Andy Harris is very much mainstream. And, typical of the bulk of today’s GOP, he keeps his voters by stoking their racism and grievance and does absolutely nothing about their issues. He doesn’t spend a minute on the the live-or-die needs of the watermen and farmers that make up his district, but is rather totally occupied with his racist scheming with other GOP hacks from around the country.
You’re likely correct it won’t happen. But given the Federalist Supreme Court, it’s not impossible. It is a valid indication of the leanings of modern Republicans. And were the election to come down to North Carolina, I’d have to regard it as likely, both in the NC lege and in SCOTUS. Actually, Roberts wouldn’t decide the election, he’d throw it into the House, pretending he didn’t know how that would come out.
Someone want to preempt the trolls on the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact?
Short version: as the Compact would award EC votes to the winner of the national popular vote, who voters in such states cast a vote for does matter. that is, their votes do count towards the national vote total. Ergo they are not disenfranchised.
One may still rationally oppose it, just not on disenfranchisement grounds.
I think it not completely off-topic to describe Trump’s disenfranchisement plans:
“Frog Pond”
snip
Deleted for being off topic and for contributing nothing but insults.
Please do better.
This is where things get scary. If it’s a close election, but the ridiculous rules we have for electing a president end up resulting in Trump, that’s one thing. But if Trump looses the popular vote by a large margin, but the rules end up selecting Trump, or, worse, Trump looses both the popular vote and the electoral college, but somehow ends up as President? I don’t see that going well. For whom, I don’t know.
People are angry. And people are really angry that their vote, which was the majority vote in the country, has been ignored multiple times over the past decades. The Supreme Court is, in many ways, illegitimate. I don’t know what happens then. But it won’t be good.
Whataboutism So doing the same as Maine. is now anti-democratic.
Even when progressive legal savant Ian Millhiser say that the Electoral College, Senate and Supreme Court are anti-democratic institutions.
@Paul L.:
Actually it’s more Democratic then winner take all. The Senate is actually anti Democratic but it was designed that way.
“Don’t call us fascist!!11!!”
@Jack: Yes, sure, the people who take issue with this “why bother to vote” scheme being thought-experimented out are the loons, not the jackasses suggesting it. SURE.
@Paul L.: Do you genuinely not understand the difference between proportional allocation after voting, and this ridiculous suggestion that no one need bother voting, as they are proposing just GIVING the electoral college votes to the party that currently controls the legislature?
You’re both ridiculous. Utterly and completely ridiculous. There is no defense for this “idea,” it belongs back in the freshman dorm room where it was apparently hatched.
Re living brain dead: someone engaging in whataboutism doesn’t label their argument whataboutism.
I wonder what the people of North Carolina think about some dude from Maryland telling them how to run their affairs?
I wonder what the people who have been working hard to make sure everybody got food, water, shelter and the opportunity to vote in NC think of this suggestion?
I know what I would think.
@Jack:..looney
Since you continue to comment at OTB we must assume that you mean yourself.
@Kathy: There was an attempt to explain whataboutism to him (more than once, I think). It didn’t take.
@Steven L. Taylor:
“I am shocked and appalled,” Kathy said deadpan.
@Steven L. Taylor: I think he has learned to recognize his whataboutism and label it, so I think he’s halfway there. Our Paul L. is learning, just slowly.
Definitely a glass half-full/half-empty moment.
@Gustopher:
I am mistaken about assignment of electoral college votes. Can’t let a crisis go to waste. Like laws and selecting judges elected officials are a proxy for the ignorant voters.
But outrage from the gun violence and catastrophic anthropogenic climate change crowd demanding President Biden/Harris take bold action to address them with executive orders ignoring the Judiciary and Legislature.