An Arizona lawmaker who signed on to be a “fake elector” for Donald Trump after the former president lost his bid for a second term has introduced a bill that would allow members of the statehouse to overturn future election results that they don’t like.
The bill, formally known as Senate Concurrent Resolution 1014 and sponsored by state Sen. Anthony Kern, seeks to bypass the popular vote altogether.
“[I]t is the responsibility of the Arizona Secretary of State to certify elections, including elections for President of the United States, but the sole authority to appoint presidential electors is granted to the Legislature,” the four-line bill reads. Therefore, it concludes, “[T]he Legislature, and no other official, shall appoint presidential electors in accordance with the United States Constitution.”
Giving the legislature absolute power to control Arizona’s electoral college votes, regardless of who won the popular vote, would disenfranchise millions of Arizonans.
Isn’t that what most States are basically already doing by sending all members of the electoral college from a single party even if their population didn’t vote at 100% for that party?
Not really.
Having winner take all states is fundamentaly worse than splitting the Electrical College votes based on the proportion of the ballot, but at least there is some kind of electoral mandate for those votes.
Pushing the Presidential election to the election of state houses allows for more shenanigans regarding gerrymandering. In this specific case, it is meant to hand Electoral College votes to a candidate that is not the choice by the majority of state voters.