Will We Know Who the President Is on November 4?
2020-09-11 · Guest: Peter Wallison (Co-director at AEI) · 52:11
Electoral College and National Popular Vote Stability
Bob Zadek and Peter Wallison discuss the potential for a constitutional crisis surrounding the 2020 election. They examine the historical intent of the Electoral College as a stabilizing force, the legal and political dangers of the National Popular Vote movement, and the logistical risks posed by universal mail-in voting. Wallison outlines a “doomsday scenario” where contested results in multiple states could prevent the seating of Congress and the election of a president before the constitutional deadline of January 20th.
Topics: Electoral College, National Popular Vote, Mail-in Voting, Federalism, 2020 Election, Constitutional Law, Presidential Succession, Peter Wallison, AEI
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek - Host
- Peter Wallison - Co-director at AEI and Scholar
Introduction and the Gravity of the Topic [00:18]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. The show, as you all know, of ideas, never once the show of attitude.
This morning’s topic just could not be more important, or is more important than any other topic I have discussed in recent memory. It is a topic which, based upon the outcome, poses a serious threat, yes, to the political future of our country. If not a threat to the political future, a threat to political stability. It may force our country to deal with structural issues which it has never in its 240-year history had to deal with before. And most scary of all, the outcome is not predictable.
This morning’s show, we will examine in detail the system by which we elect our president, the Electoral College, and we will discuss the misunderstood and underappreciated important issue of mail-in voting. Is mail-in voting simply a mechanical decision, like should we wear red or blue or green clothing, or is it something which, if we get it wrong, it threatens the future of our system?
Introducing Peter Wallison [01:01]
Bob Zadek: To help us understand these issues, which could not be more important, I’m happy to welcome to the show Peter Wallison. Peter is a co-director at AEI and is a scholar who has written many important books. The title of some of Peter’s books will tell you a lot about Peter. Peter has written about President Reagan, a wonderful book that he wrote in 2002 about Reagan’s campaign. And for those of you who are fond of the wonderful movie, The Big Short—a movie that I have just rewatched—Peter has published and has written a dissenting point of view to the findings of the Financial Crisis Review Commission. Peter’s article and his piece on that is a companion piece to that wonderful movie.
Of relevance to us this morning, Peter has written recently on the National Popular Vote movement, a movement seeking to replace the Electoral College with a system of national popular vote. The presidential candidate who gets 51% of the popular vote, ignoring the Electoral College vote, he will become, or she will become, the president. His article, “The National Popular Vote: A Threat to Electoral Stability,” will get most of our attention this morning. Peter, welcome to the show this morning.
Peter Wallison: Good to be with you, Bob. Thanks for the invitation.
Bob Zadek: And thank you for your writing and thank you for your piece that you had written on the National Popular Vote movement. We’re going to explore all of that. Our audience probably is—they’re certainly not as familiar with it as you are, and it is important that they understand what is going on in the area of Electoral College debate and national popular vote, majority rule, one person, one vote, it often is said. But there’s so much smoke and misunderstanding out there. It is my hope, with your help, to have our audience have a clearer understanding so they can form their own opinions.
The History and Purpose of the Electoral College [02:31]
Bob Zadek: Now, as to the Electoral College, give us a tiny bit of the Electoral College history. What is the Electoral College, and what were the founders thinking when they created the Electoral College? Why didn’t they simply just say, which would be kind of the natural approach, “Well, we have a democracy—we don’t, but let’s have a democracy—and a democracy means people get to vote for stuff, including vote for the chief executive”? So how did we end up not with just a popular vote, which would be the natural order of things in a democracy, and how do we end up with the Electoral College?
Peter Wallison: Well, the Electoral College was established during the time that the Constitution was drafted and ratified by the public. And that was a time when there were about maybe three million people in the United States scattered along the East Coast. The communication, of course, at that time was very difficult. In fact, it went at the speed of a horse. And it was probably likely that many people, being farmers and separated from the cities or the towns that existed at the time, would not have known who might be the kind of person who should be the president of the United States.
They had just established a Constitution which called for a president, which was very unusual, of course. Almost all countries at that time had kings or some other kind of monarch that was inherited. But we are going to have in this country, according to the Constitution, we’re going to have an elected chief executive. So how do you choose such a person in a country that is so spread out with so little communication?
The founding fathers’ idea, I think—it’s not been widely talked about—but the founding fathers’ idea was to find people who are likely to be connected to one another throughout the various—throughout the 13 colonies that existed at the time. People who kept in touch by writing and visiting back and forth. They would be able to identify, it was felt, the best people in the country who could serve as president of the United States. These people were then designated as electors. They weren’t designated by name, but each state, each colony was told, “You may have the number of electors equal to the number of representatives you have in Congress plus two senators.” And those electors would get together at some time and go over the names of some of the great people in the country and select the people who would then run for president and vice president, actually, at the same time. And that’s the reason, I think, for the establishment of the Electoral College in the first place. It narrowed down the number of potential candidates for the highest office in the land and it made it possible for people then to vote for a limited group instead of a massive group of unknown people.
Bob Zadek: Now, Peter, let me just interrupt and just not summarize, but drill a little bit deeper into what you have explained to us. The Electoral College—we would call that, if we were using 21st-century jargon, we would call them (and the word is kind of offensive to me, but I’ll use it) the elites. They were the elites, the wise men, just like the Senate was thought in colonial times, and today perhaps, to be the wise men, or at least wiser. And so it was felt that let us have the voters outsource, hire people—the electors—to make a decision because they had access to a bit more information. Maybe they were just plain smarter, they were more well-traveled. But that was the theory.
So people did have the right to vote for president, but it was indirect. They would vote for people who would vote for the president. And there wasn’t much thought at the time of the founding to the direct election. It really wasn’t seriously considered during the debate over the Constitution, those four and a half months in 1787. So this was the system which was, of course, like most of the important provisions in the Constitution, a compromise designed to accomplish a number of different goals and to establish the country on a hopefully sustainable political footing.
Also, I want to mention one other point which you did make, but I want to emphasize it. The United States in 1787 invented the concept of president. The concept didn’t exist on Earth. So the founders had the benefits of history—they studied history extensively—but they had to invent the president, the chief magistrate, the chief executive, which never existed on Earth. And that was a daunting challenge, and the office we have today is a result of their thoughtful considerations at the time.
The Modern Debate: Stability vs. Direct Democracy [07:21]
Bob Zadek: Okay, so Peter, so now the Electoral College is created. Now, at the time, here we have the ratification debates, and the states and through the states the people themselves have this vigorous debate over ratification. Was there any serious opposition? Remember, we were creating a democratic republic. Democracy was in everybody’s—on everybody’s lips at the time. And many provisions of the Constitution were the subject of serious debate during ratification, witness the Bill of Rights, which was a condition of ratification for many states. So was there much opposition in this fervor for a new country founded on democratic principles? Was there much opposition to the Electoral College as somehow denying people their say in government?
Peter Wallison: No, there was not. There were many controversial issues that were before the public in this ratification process, but the Electoral College was not. And one of the reasons for that, I think, is that nobody really conceived of what it meant to have a president. Because the powers, as people saw it and as they looked at the Constitution that was drafted, the powers were going to be held by Congress, by the representatives in Congress and the Senate. So the presidency was important, but it was just not—it was just not as important as the elected people who were going to be making the laws.
Bob Zadek: Now fast forward to today, when we are continuing a debate which probably started with some seriousness after Bush v. Gore election in 2000 and elections before it, perhaps. We’ve had, I think, five instances where the president who was elected through the Electoral College system got less than a majority of the popular vote. The first one was, of course, John Quincy Adams, I think in 1824, when he was elected by the House of Representatives. He didn’t get an electoral majority. And there have been five instances, I think, in our history.
But Bush v. Gore started in earnest an examination by many people, thoughtful people, that maybe the Electoral College was anachronistic, it was anti-small-d democratic, and it was a vestige of entitled white men’s vision of government 240 years ago, and it became the subject of examination. What are the complaints against the Electoral College, and what are the main arguments in support of the Electoral College, just to frame the discussion today? When we turn on the news later on this morning, we will probably hear this topic discussed somewhere. So summarize what the battle now has been drawn. What are the arguments for and against the Electoral College in summary?
Peter Wallison: The strongest argument against the Electoral College is the one we’ll talk about, I think, this morning, and that is if we really have a democracy, why aren’t we electing our president with a majority, a simple majority of the popular vote? Rather than going through this other process where what in effect is 50 separate—referring here to the states—50 separate presidential elections which are then brought together through the Electoral College to choose this chief executive of the country. And that idea, of course, is very—the notion that we should be electing our president with a majority of the popular vote is a very powerful one at a time when we are sensitive to and understand the importance of a democracy.
The advantages of the Electoral College, however, have not been fully considered. All of us who live here understand the power of the idea of a president being elected with the popular vote. But what we don’t really consider, and what the people who have been pressing for what is called the National Popular Vote—and I have to say here, this is very partisan issue. Only the Democrats have been pushing for the National Popular Vote. No state controlled by the Republicans has voted to participate in it. Only states controlled at the time by the Democrats. And they have—just for your listeners’ knowledge—right now, states with 196 electoral votes have voted through their state legislatures to send all of their votes, all of their electoral votes, to the winner of the national popular vote, even if their particular state did not vote for that person for president.
The Threat of a Multi-Party System [10:01]
Bob Zadek: Peter, we’re going to explain the National Popular Vote movement to our audience in a moment. But first, in general, let’s focus on the existing system, the Electoral College. The argument against the Electoral College is it simply violates principles of small-d democracy. We like majority rule. So that’s a compelling argument. Why doesn’t majority rule? What is the argument in support, or the primary argument, or more than one argument if you wish, in support of the Electoral College as a system for electing the president?
Peter Wallison: It has created—the strongest argument in my view is that it has created a stability in our politics that exists nowhere else and could exist nowhere else. I think the supporters of the National Popular Vote seem to believe that after that idea goes into effect, there will still be two political parties. That’s not true. There will not be two parties. The reason there are two parties now is because of the Electoral College. You have to get a majority of the Electoral College in order to elect the president, and so two parties is the only way that one party can be assured of winning the vote for the president of the United States.
So we have two parties only because of the Electoral College. Now if we eliminate the Electoral College, which is essentially what people are talking about, we will not have two parties. We will have 10 parties, 12 parties. We will have a Right to Life party, and a Choice party, and an anti-immigrant party, and a pro-immigrant party, and a pro-gun and an anti-gun party. Those kinds of things will grow up. Plus, we will have a lot of very wealthy people, like say Michael Bloomberg, who can run their own campaigns. They have so much money they can run their own campaigns for president.
So we would find in the elections of the future, without an Electoral College, we’ll have 10, 12 candidates running for president, and in the end, the winner will probably have 20% of the vote. And the others will be arranged down below that. Now, is that going to satisfy people? No, because 20% of the vote, of course, is much worse than less than 50% of the vote. It means that the person who is purported to become president has only had the vote of one-fifth of the American people. He won’t be able to—he or she would not be able to speak for the American people the way the winner of the Electoral College has been able to speak for them.
And let me mention this. In the election of Bill Clinton, there were three candidates running: Clinton, Bush, and a third candidate. In that election, I think it was 1992, Clinton got 43% of the vote. Way below 50% of the vote. And yet there was never a question about whether he was the validly elected president and could speak for the American people. And the reason for that is that the American people actually think that the Electoral College, when someone wins a majority in the Electoral College, he or she has won something very close to the popular vote, but at least according to the legal processes that have been set up by the Constitution.
So we have this wonderful, very valuable idea, and that is that the American people will approve of the winner as their president and see that winner as their president as long as the person who wins the electoral vote takes office as the president. Now there are some people who don’t like that, particularly people who don’t like the current president. But over the years, what the Electoral College has done for this country is to assure us of two parties and assure us that the winner of the Electoral College vote is the president of the United States with the approval of almost all of the American people. So I think what we’re talking about here, the best thing in favor of the Electoral College is the fact that it creates stability. And if we go any deeper, Bob, into what happens without the Electoral College, we can see how much instability would be created by allowing many, many people to run for president without the two-party system.
Campaigning Under a National Popular Vote [12:31]
Bob Zadek: Peter, offer your observations, your opinions. In your opinion, Peter, because you have studied this so extensively, what would—without getting much into the weeds, just a tiny bit—so now we have battleground states, mostly in the Midwest, and we have states where it’s not a battleground: New York, Texas perhaps, California obviously, Massachusetts—non-battleground states where the outcome is all but assured, and therefore a presidential candidate of either party doesn’t bother to campaign in those states because the outcome is assured. What, assuming we had a national popular vote, assuming that was the rule, what would campaigning be like? And how would a presidential candidate seeking to be elected president, how would he or she allocate resources to get elected? And what attention would be paid to former battleground states, to assured states? How would campaigning be different, and what effect would that have on the legitimacy of the election and on political life in America?
Peter Wallison: Well, as we know, most of the population of this country is on the two coasts. And the easiest way to campaign, if we’re talking about that kind of election, which is just a popular election, the easiest way to campaign is to go into the cities of the largest states and harvest your votes there. Because it’s least costly in terms of advertising and travel and that sort of thing. You and the people who are supporting you spend most of your time in the states where most of the votes are, and the smaller states with fewer population would mostly be ignored in a system like that.
What the Electoral College does, of course, is it encourages people to go to all the states, or as many states as they think they can possibly win, in order to be elected through the Electoral College because the smaller states also have a fair amount of power in the Electoral College system that they wouldn’t have in a popular vote.
Bob Zadek: And I would imagine that—or I can kind of imagine—if I were living in a small-population state, I would feel totally disenfranchised. It would be just like living in California or New York—why bother to vote? The outcome is predetermined. So I lose interest in terms of actually voting or voter participation. In California, in New York, in Massachusetts, you just lose interest because who cares? It doesn’t matter. And when you have a huge segment of the country where they know their vote doesn’t matter, they will lose interest, stop identifying, stop feeling like Washington governs and cares, if you will, about them. That, to me, would be incredibly unhealthy just for people’s relationship to their country. They would feel disloyal, disassociated. It’s almost painful to think about when they know they will never have a voice in Washington except in the Senate, but certainly not in the presidency. So I think you’re exactly right about that, and that will profoundly alter, all bad, the effect of national popular vote on the election.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [15:01]
Bob Zadek: Now, tell us about—we started to talk about it, Peter, but help our friends understand the National Popular Vote movement and how it goes about in effect eliminating the Electoral College, but without constitutional amendment. Tell us what the plan is. You started to talk about the states that have already signed on to it. Tell us what has already happened and what is continuing to happen to in effect write the Electoral College out of the Constitution.
Peter Wallison: Yeah, it’s a really simple plan, and that is that any state can—at least according to them, this has not been tested in the courts—but the idea is that the governor and the legislatures of any state can declare that their electors will vote for the person who gets the national popular vote. Not the vote that is in the state—let’s take the state of Iowa—not the votes of the people of Iowa, but in fact the votes of the national electorate. Whoever gets the highest number of popular votes would get the electoral votes of Iowa, even if the people of Iowa didn’t vote for that person for president.
That’s a very simple system, but what it does produce, of course, is what I said before, and that is that there will be 10 or 12 or 15 people running for president with the hope that they could get a majority of the national popular vote. They won’t get a majority, but the winner will probably have something like 20%.
Where we are today is that the electoral votes of a number of states totaling 196 electoral votes have now joined, I guess we should say, the National Popular Vote movement. All of them are Democratic states. No Republican state has yet voted. But if they can get 74 additional votes, the National Popular Vote system will go into effect. And that could happen after this coming election if more states turn out to have Democratic leaders or Democratic majorities. Once that happens, then the National Popular Vote system will go into effect.
But there will certainly be litigation about it. There will certainly be something that gets to the Supreme Court. But it will feasibly be a new way for the president to be elected. Unfortunately, as I said, it will not be through a two-party system; it will be through a multi-party system in which someone will come out not with a majority, but with a high plurality, maybe 20%. And that person would be considered, or will have to be considered if that voting system turns out to be constitutional, that person will be the president.
Federalism and the Role of States [17:41]
Bob Zadek: An observation if I may, and then a question, Peter. The observation is, to me, a fervent supporter, a strong supporter of federalism, the principle that the closer government is to me personally, the happier I am. I’d rather have government close to me in my town, in my city, in my county, and in my state have more of a say over my life than a government distant in Washington, D.C., with a one-size-fits-all. I am passionately a supporter of federalism as the founders have designed it. And to me, the effect—an observation—the effect of the National Popular Vote movement is basically to remove the concept of states. Of living in a state where you are comfortable—this state speaks for me, I am comfortable with its tax policy, I am comfortable with its employment policies, I am comfortable with its relationship to private property, I am comfortable with its relationship to healthcare and police protection. I have more control over my state than I do over my country, and therefore I’d prefer that power reside as close as possible. The concept of states kind of disappears. It relegates states to being nothing more than a department of the federal government. And that is almost too painful for me to speak about.
Now, my question, Peter, is as to the National Popular Vote movement. Just another observation: you said it’ll go into the courts. Coming attractions: in the last term of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has had to consider the issue of what was called faithless electors, electors who didn’t do what they promised they were going to do or what the state law compelled them to do. And Supreme Court jurisprudence seems to be—it’s not decided National Popular Vote movement—but it seems to be that states can control and can dictate how electors must vote. So the Supreme Court composition will change over time, but just coming attractions are that under existing jurisprudence, the Supreme Court is not likely to find the National Popular Vote Compact, the compact between the states, to be per se unconstitutional. Just an observation.
Now, so therefore, with the National Popular Vote movement, once it achieves control of a majority of the 270 electoral votes, it will automatically become effective. Now, I’d ask your opinion, Peter: why do you think it is that Democratic states are the only states that support the National Popular Vote movement? One would think that small-d democracy, majority rule—even though I oppose it—but one would think that majority rule and let the people decide would not be partisan. So what is there about the concept that makes it find support only among Democratic states and not at all Republican states?
Peter Wallison: I think it has to do mostly with the election of Donald Trump. For reasons that have escaped me, there are so many Democrats who are angry about the election of Donald Trump that they go to extremes on these issues. And this has started the movement for the National Popular Vote because Trump did win the Electoral College without a majority of the popular votes in the United States. He’s not the only one who’s ever done that, but this has angered them.
And the fact is that the only times this has happened, at least in modern times, is where the Republican candidate has won a majority of the electoral vote but not necessarily a majority of the popular vote. But as you said, there are so many advantages of the electoral system that there’s not a good reason to eliminate it because the candidates of one party happened to have won the presidency without a majority of the popular vote.
The Dangers of Universal Mail-in Voting [20:31]
Peter Wallison: And I should mention one other thing before we forget it, because this is important. We have many times—we have allegations of fraud in our elections. But under the Electoral College system, if we have a fraud allegation in say Illinois, which is prone to those things, or Pennsylvania or any other relatively large place, that doesn’t matter really if we’re using the Electoral College system because it’s unlikely that that particular state will have turned everything.
In the year 2000, of course, that happened in Florida, was the opposite of what I’m saying. There was one state that could have changed the outcome of the election if the outcome in that state had been different. But in most cases, if there’s alleged fraud in one state, that will not make a difference in who is elected president.
But under the National Popular Vote system, every state’s votes will have to be counted very carefully. And there will be litigation, undoubtedly, in almost every state about whether those votes were counted properly, because each vote in those states under the National Popular Vote system will count toward who is elected president. And so we will end up after an election with a lot of litigation about people who—especially if it’s a close election—a lot of people alleging that there was fraud in their states, and these things will go through the courts, eventually probably to the Supreme Court. And we may be without a president for a long time until those issues are settled. That very seldom happens under the electoral system we have today, but could happen certainly under the National Popular Vote very frequently.
Bob Zadek: Tied in with our discussion of the Electoral College and National Popular Vote, tied in is of course this scary—and the audience will understand very shortly why I use the word scary—discussion of mail-in voting. And Peter, you have written persuasively and pointing out some frightening issues on what could happen, indeed dare I say likely to happen, if the country follows through, which apparently it will, on encouraging and making it very easy for there to be mail-in voting.
Now, just—and I’ll ask you to help us understand why that frightens you and how you have been able to frighten me. But before we do, I just want to establish a few definitional concepts so the audience can follow your explanation. We have always had, I dare say, absentee ballot. An absentee ballot is one where a voter, one-off, a voter says, “I would like to vote by mail. Please send me my ballot by mail. I will not show up at the poll.” That is an action initiated by the voter requesting a mail-in ballot. We have in modern times, we have always had that.
The mail-in voting as a matter of a change in state policy is the government, the state, takes it upon itself to just mail out to everybody a ballot. So the government decides no one has to show up at the poll, we’re just going to mail you a ballot and you can vote by mail. So it’s initiated not by the voter one-off, but rather by the state as a matter of policy. And that distinction, I think you will find to be very important as Peter explains the doomsday scenario, to borrow from that great movie Dr. Strangelove. Tell us the doomsday scenario, Peter, which could happen and indeed will happen, dare I say, if we have widespread mail-in voting.
The Doomsday Scenario: January 20th and Succession [23:31]
Peter Wallison: Yeah, there are some states that have been doing this for many, many years, and they have—I won’t say perfected the system, but they have gotten it to a point where it’s reasonably fair. But what’s happening this year, different from the past, is an effort, a strong effort by a number of states to start mail-in voting because of the pandemic. And they are not adopting rules which will result in easily finding out what the mail-in ballots actually produced.
There are so many different rules in different states about how a ballot will be sent out and how the ballot will be turned in and when the ballot has to be turned in, what the postmark has to be on the ballot. And then, of course, there are always questions about whether the signature on the ballot is a valid signature and whether the person who has received the ballot and sent it in is still a resident of the state. There was a very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago in which a person who had moved to Texas from Nevada received a ballot from Nevada sent to his home in Texas. So he was able actually, if he was willing to do something like that, he was able to vote in both places as a resident of Texas and as a former resident of Nevada.
We will have lots of problems like that. And in the primary system that we just went through, there are many cases in which they weren’t able to settle who won the primary system in this past June and July for five or six weeks after the primary was actually held. So what can happen—and this is the horrifying system that worries me—is that in enough states on November 3rd, Election Day, they will not have counted fully their mail-in ballots. Some states can’t even start counting the mail-in ballots until Election Day. They will not have counted their mail-in ballots and they will not be able to report anything close to November 3rd what is the result in the state.
And because of disputes about whether a certain person or group of people are in fact residents of the state, if they mailed their ballot in time, whether the signature on the ballot is their valid signature, all of those disputes, as has happened during the primary system we’ve just passed through, will then be brought up in the final election. And those things will have to be settled by the courts. And if 10 or 12 or 15 states have litigation in the courts and it is a close election where no one has won the presidency because of getting sufficient votes in the Electoral College, then we will have to wait until the courts settle all of these cases.
And as you know, this can take some time. The trouble is that there are certain deadlines that have to be met. For example, the current president, President Trump, must leave office at noon on January 20th under the Constitution. That’s what the 20th Amendment to the Constitution says. So he’s out of office at noon on January 20th. Where are we if there is no president elected by January 20th? That’s not that hard to imagine; that’s only about eight weeks after the election in November. And anyone who’s been involved in a legal case understands that those things can go on for some time with many levels of appeal and so forth.
So we get to January 20th, it’s still not clear who’s the president. President Trump steps down. What happens then? There is no law that makes clear who becomes the president at that time. There is something called the Presidential Succession Act, and that says that if the president is for some reason unable to serve—and that would be the case because Mr. Trump would have to leave the White House, he’s unable to serve—then the Speaker of the House becomes the president temporarily. And if the Speaker of the House can’t do it, then the President pro tempore of the Senate, one of the oldest senators, becomes the president.
Now, that sounds like a solution, even though it might not be the solution people would want given who is the Speaker of the House. But we don’t know who will be the Speaker of the House at that point because if there are problems with all of these mail-in ballots, it’s not only the presidency that won’t be decided, but many, many of the House of Representatives seats and Senate seats in the states where there are disputes, which could be as many as 15 or 20 states. Now if that’s true, we won’t know who the Speaker of the House is either because there might not be enough people elected from the states to fill a quorum of the House to elect a speaker. And if the speaker is elected, whether that speaker will be a Republican or a Democrat, that would depend on whether more Democrats or more Republicans are elected in the election on November 3rd and have their elections been certified by the courts after all the disputes have been ironed out before January 20th. So we don’t really even know who would be the Speaker of the House or the President pro tempore of the Senate, and we might not know that when President Trump has to step down on January 20th. So this is a very, very scary scenario, especially when we have riots going on in many of our major cities and people who seem to want to influence the direction of the country through burning and looting and so forth. So I cannot offer any solace to people who see the problem I see here. There is no rule in place right now which will solve this problem.
Closing Remarks [26:01]
Bob Zadek: And those of you who think that Nancy Pelosi will become president, you are wrong because the Constitution as amended requires that the House of Representatives must convene on January 3rd, if I’m not mistaken, of 2021. And since, as Peter pointed out, we do not know or may not know who is in the House, therefore the House can’t convene because they don’t know who’s in it, and therefore they cannot elect a new speaker who will then in effect be elected president if this is all in dispute. So we have profound vulnerability.
And add to that the mood of great unhappiness and the ease by which unhappy citizens find themselves able to go into the streets and destroy personal property and to riot. It seems to become almost acceptable, at least in certain quarters, that that’s a way to express your unhappiness. Just imagine uncertainty as to the president, the courts are litigating all over the place about who gets elected to what office, and we have no president. The government, our federal government, cannot function. All of this is a reasonable prediction of what could happen from mail-in balloting.
Now, Peter mentioned obviously accurately that those who support mail-in balloting, once again, it’s partisan, it’s mostly people on the left, maybe exclusively people on the left. Those who support mail-in balloting have said we have to do it because of the pandemic. And to that, I have just a closing thought. It is interesting that the same folks on the left who are suspicious if we have a vaccine to cure the COVID pandemic—they are suspicious that we will be rushing it out, Trump will be rushing it out to encourage an election result—and yet those are the same people who are rushing out something far worse: rushing out mail-in balloting, which hasn’t been tested, hasn’t been examined. So that’s what’s in store for us.
Thus, Peter has scared the bejesus out of me and I suspect you as well. So Peter, we’ll have to commiserate with each other on November 4th and light a candle and hope for the best, won’t we? Because there’s no immediate solution. The wise men running our country don’t seem to have their hands on this issue whatsoever. It is scary times. So Peter, I would like to thank you so much for sharing so much of what you have learned and what you understand about the operation of politics. And I will invite our listeners out there to follow your writings over at AEI. And once again, I commend our listeners to your book, Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, and also your dissent from the majority report on the financial crisis. Peter, thank you so much for your time this morning, and thanks to all my friends out there. And I suspect you are spending the rest of the day trembling as I am about what will happen after this election. Peter, thank you so much for your time.
Peter Wallison: Sure, Bob. Thank you. And it’s a lack of sleep rather than trembling that I’m doing.
Bob Zadek: Have a good day despite that, Peter.
Peter Wallison: Take care.
Bob Zadek: Thank you.