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Look who is rigging the elections now

American presidential elections are complicated. Most of the world that wants to follow them by now understands that they are decided in an Electoral College. That however is not necessarily the case.

The Electoral College is a process

The Electoral College is not an institution with a well-tended campus, but rather a process. Each state gets a number of votes in this process equivalent to its number of members of Congress (two Senators for each state plus a number of representatives proportional to its population). The electors will cast their votes in state capitals on December 17 this year. In all but two states (Maine and Nebraska), the electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote (those two states have processes for splitting their electoral votes).

The District of Columbia, which is not a state, also gets three electoral votes. That makes a total of 538 votes (50 states x 2 Senators each, no matter their population, plus + 435 members of the House + 3 for DC). In order to be elected president, a candidate needs a majority, that is at least 270 electoral votes.

The Electoral College process favors the Republicans, who control more smaller population states with disproportionately larger numbers of electoral votes, due to the two senators. Both George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 lost the popular vote but won in the Electoral College. Trump is likely to lose the popular vote again but could still win in the Electoral College due to his strength in low-population states.

Here’s the rub

If no one gets a majority in the Electoral College, the presidency would be decided in the House of Representatives. There each state would cast a single vote. The Republicans hold the advantage. They control more state delegations. That is why Republicans are working hard to try to prevent certification in enough states to prevent Harris from winning the majority of the Electoral College.

This is election rigging. It is attractive to hope that it won’t pass muster in the courts, as the video above suggests. But the reality is that courts are slow. The Georgia Election Board has already adopted rules intended to make it easier to delay certification. Election officials in other states may do likewise. And violent demonstrations could prevent certification at the state level, as the January 6, 2021 crowd tried to do at the national level. Even the credible threat of jail terms after the fact is unlikely to prevent some miscreants from trying to rig the election.

There is a solution

The solution is an unequivocal election outcome, especially in battleground states. That will not be easy to achieve. We call them battlegrounds precisely because we expect the vote there to be close. In many, Trump and Harris are running neck and neck, even if she is pulling out ahead in the national polls. In Georgia, Harris is still 4 percentage points behind. You shouldn’t expect the Trumpkins to delay certification there if he scores a definitive win.

Enthusiasm for Harris is still growing. Trump is stumbling. He has tried many lines of attack, to no avail. He has claimed she is dumb and that he is better looking. It was no surprise that he gained little traction with those obviously false claims. Trump may have looked viable against an aging Joe Biden. But he is now the aging candidate all too obviously less energetic, articulate, smart, well-informed, and well-prepared than Harris. May the best woman win, big.

What Harris needs to do now

Wow! Even for someone who in early July thought she would be a good candidate, Kamala Harris has overperformed. The Democratic Party unified quickly, she took the reins without hesitation, and she has now claimed high ground.

Donald Trump is flummoxed. Instead of running against a wizened pol hesitant to go on the offensive, he now faces a vibrant, high-energy woman determined to take the fight to him. The polling has already turned in her direction, putting her up a couple of points nationally and at least even in most of the battleground states. What could go wrong?

Lots of hurdles ahead in September

Trump’s effort to label her a communist extremist isn’t gaining much traction. A lot of Americans don’t remember communism. A woman who spent decades as a prosecutor doesn’t fit easily into the extremism box.

But lots of other potential hurdles loom. The presidential debate, if Trump doesn’t back out, will take place on September 10. Harris should be able to slice and dice him when it comes to policy, but a debate is also about image and presence. She wins on those scores with me, but a woman as commander-in-chief is a novelty for Americans. We’ll have to see how it goes.

The vice presidential candidates will also debate, on October 1. There Tim Walz’s normality and J.D. Vance’s weirdness will no doubt be on display. Debates, however, are always high-risk, high-gain events. A single flub or cutting remark can determine the impression a debate leaves.

Between the debates, on September 17 and 18, a Federal Reserve meeting will have an opportunity to begin lowering interest rates. It will act if it thinks the economy is slowing enough to end the post-pandemic inflationary spiral. It will postpone the decision if inflation still looks resilient. Harris will be a lot better off if inflation continues edging downwards toward the 2% annual goal from the 2.9% August figure. The new figure will be out September 11.

October will be about the battlegrounds

Campaigning is already focused mainly on the few states where the outcome is not already clear. The American “Electoral College,” an 18th century anomaly embedded in the constitution, makes that a necessary feature of American presidential elections. Each state has a number of electoral votes equivalent to its members of the Congress (two Senators per state plus a number of Representatives proportional to population). This system favors less populous states, in many of which the Republicans are strong.

270towin.com figures the state-by-state breakdown this way:

The battlegrounds are Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Some might add North Carolina or Ohio. But basically you’ve got a contest in two states in the west, three in the middle west, and one other in the south.

In all these, the main issue will be turnout and ballot access, which is determined by state laws and regulations. Georgia, which is Republican-controlled, has been aggressively trying to limit voting. Such efforts will be undertaken elsewhere as well, including refusal to certify results after the election. The courts will be jammed with efforts to get Republican complaints to the Supreme Court, where Trump can hope his three appointees will once again join in majorities deciding in his favor.

What it will take

The Economist is right. Harris will need more than the good vibes she has already generated to win. But I doubt they are correct about the need for more policy detail. They want principled consistency. Most American voters wouldn’t know if she offered it. The main thing for Harris is to convince Americans that she understands their problems and has the ability and interest to try to solve them. That is where Trump is weakest. It should be where she is strongest.