{"id":41680,"date":"2020-10-31T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2020-10-31T17:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=41680"},"modified":"2020-10-30T20:08:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-31T03:08:08","slug":"everyday-erinyes-238","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/31\/everyday-erinyes-238\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #238"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

“Quot homines, tot sententiae<\/em><\/strong>.” (Or in other words, “Opinions are like [fill in NSFW blank]; everybody has one.”) I have another election article I was ready to use, but it can wait. I suspect everyone’s nerves are as shredded as mine about, not the election itself, but the Trump* response to it, and this article addresses contested elections directly, and may (or, of course, not) be a calming influence, or at the very least give us ideas on how to be ready for anything.
\n================================================================<\/p>\n

A contested election: 5 essential reads<\/h1>\n
What happens when an election is contested?
\nGorilla Studio\/Getty<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Naomi Schalit<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Democracy in America could hit a rough patch soon, as election officials tally votes in the presidential race. More than 350 lawsuits have already been filed this year across the country<\/a> over how, where and when voters could cast ballots. One presidential candidate \u2013 Donald Trump \u2013 has refused to commit to accepting the election\u2019s results<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All that sets up the country for a disputed presidential election, with recounts and court battles in key states and a nation left wondering both who will lead it and whether they should have faith in the election\u2019s integrity. We asked five scholars to provide a history of contested elections in the United States and to explain what happens when an election is disputed. Here are those stories, from our archives.<\/p>\n

1. Things should be OK<\/h2>\n

\u201cIf Trump refuses to accept defeat in November, the republic will survive intact, as it has 5 out of 6 times in the past<\/a>.\u201d That\u2019s the headline on political scientist Alexander Cohen\u2019s<\/a> story.<\/p>\n

Cohen lays out what elections normally do: They \u201cgenerate legitimacy because citizens contribute to the selection of leadership.\u201d And even in contested elections of the past, he continues, that legitimacy has been sustained because those disputes have been handled according to the rules. Politicians and citizens may have \u201chowled\u201d about the unfairness of the outcome, but, Cohen reports, they accepted it.<\/p>\n

\"Santa<\/a>
Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters\u2019 Shannon Bushey shows an official county ballot collection box on Oct. 13, 2020 in San Jose, California.<\/span>
\nJustin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2. How to get to the Supreme Court<\/h2>\n

State law controls almost every aspect of voting, so if there\u2019s an election dispute, then it will go to a state court<\/a>, writes constitutional scholar John Finn<\/a>. \u201cA candidate who wants to challenge the result in any particular state must first identify what provision of state law the election did not satisfy.\u201d Most of the time, a state court decision will determine which presidential candidate gets the state\u2019s electoral votes, with a final decision made by the state\u2019s supreme court.<\/p>\n

But then there is Bush v. Gore<\/a>, the case that settled the 2000 election, which demonstrated that an election dispute can end up being heard by the Supreme Court if someone charges that a federal constitutional right has been violated. It\u2019s possible, Finn writes, that several challenges similar to Bush v. Gore could arise in the 2020 election. \u201cAnd where the lawsuits involved in Bush v. Gore all originated in Florida,\u201d he writes, \u201cthis time the chaos may reach across several states.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Throw the vote to Congress<\/h2>\n

There is another way that an election can end up being decided by others than the voters and the Electoral College. Not when it\u2019s a disputed election, but when the Electoral College members are tied or don\u2019t give any candidate a straight majority. That throws the election to the House of Representatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Political scientist Donald Brand<\/a> writes that this method of determining a winner was not exactly the first choice of the framers, who \u201csought to avoid congressional involvement in presidential elections.\u201d But if the Electoral College couldn\u2019t provide a majority vote for one candidate, the election would wind up in the House, \u201cpresumably because as the institution closest to the people, it could bestow some democratic legitimacy on a contingent election.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Could the presidential election be decided by the Supreme Court?<\/span>
\nAstrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

4. Stolen elections leave bitterness<\/h2>\n

The republic may survive, but some disputed elections have \u201cdivided the nation, in ways that were hard to heal, or perhaps never healed<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Political scientist Sarah Burns<\/a> says that the election of 1824, which was resolved with what was then called a \u201ccorrupt bargain,\u201d and the disputed 2000 election, which was effectively ended by the Supreme Court, both caused such anger that they poisoned national politics for some time. Critics of the court\u2019s decisive role in 2000 pointed out that \u201cBush had failed to win the popular vote, and that the Supreme Court vote was split 5-4, with the conservative justices in the majority delivering an outcome favorable to their political leanings.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. Judicial credibility<\/h2>\n

Judges like to stay in their branch of government \u2013 the judiciary \u2013 and leave the politics to politicians. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter warned his fellow jurists to avoid \u201cembroilment\u201d in \u201cthe political thicket\u201d of \u201cparty contests and party interests.\u201d But a disputed election will be fought in the courts, and that\u2019s dangerous for the standing of any court, especially the U.S. Supreme Court. Voters will see judges\u2019 actions and ascribe political intent to them, even if that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n

Austin Sarat<\/a>, a legal scholar and political scientist, rakes into a pile the hundreds of lawsuits<\/a> that have already been mounted over how the election is conducted this year, describing what they aim to do. He believes that the election\u2019s outcome is likely to end up in court \u2013 and he says there\u2019s danger ahead, for the lower courts as well as the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever decisions judges make this year, the rush to the courthouse to shape the 2020 election will pose real challenges for their legitimacy, which ultimately depends<\/a> on the public\u2019s belief that they are not simply political actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation\u2019s archives.<\/em>\"The<\/p>\n

Naomi Schalit<\/a>, Senior Editor, Politics + Society, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nAMT, anything you can do to help ensure that we don’t have to worry about this will be deeply appreciated by all.<\/p>\n

The Furies and I will be back<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":40593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4165,3869,4164,3765,3781,4116],"class_list":["post-41680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-election-law","tag-election-theft","tag-elections","tag-supreme-court","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}