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.
