Last Updated on October 25, 2024
Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris expressed support for the direct appointment of North Carolina’s electors by that state’s majority-Republican legislature.
The move to call a special session to directly appoint North Carolina’s electors would likely result in all sixteen electoral votes going to Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.
Hurricane Helene ravaged twenty-five counties in Western North Carolina, ruining any chance for a fair and open election in the state.
Congressman Harris made the comments in a meeting in Maryland on Thursday night.
Such a move would not be novel, and has long-standing historical precedent, going back to the founding of the republic.
The majority of the states’ legislatures directly appointed electors for many of the nation’s first presidential contests.
Direct Appointment of electors to the Electoral College was practiced regularly by many legislatures in the United States up until and even after the Civil War.
It was not until legislatures learned that they could avoid accountability for choosing a state’s selection for president — a vote that might be seen as a contentious vote by many constituents — that legislatures began to institute statewide popular elections in order to let themselves off the hook for a potentially controversial vote.
Crucially, the Direct Appointment of Electors by legislatures is rooted firmly in the U.S. Constitution, and not in the capriciousness of newly written state or federal statutes.
Nor is Direct Appointment of Electors by legislatures grounded in the mercurial nature of the federal judiciary, which in 1857 enforced the Dred Scott decision, which held that black Americans were not citizens, and which in 1897 enforced outright racism of the “separate but equal” doctrine, as the Supreme Court did with Plessy v. Ferguson.
Instead, the U.S. Constitution makes it abundantly clear that the power to Directly Appoint electors resides directly and exclusively with the legislature.
In fact, the governor is not even required, should the North Carolina legislature desire to directly appoint the Old North State’s electors to Donald Trump.
The reason for this is that the parameters for the appointment of Electors to the Electoral College falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Constitution, and does not follow any state’s constitution.
READ: U.S. Constitution Allows North Carolina Legislature to Award Electors to Donald Trump in 2024
The United States Constitution gives every state legislature the power to award its electors in each of the fifty federal election contests for President of the United States.
The U.S. Constitution vests in the State legislatures – and only the legislatures – the power and the duty to select the members of the Electoral College, according to Article II, Section 1, clause 2.
Article II, Sec. 1, Clause 2 reads as follows:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
During the contested 2000 Bush vs. Gore election dispute in Florida, George W. Bush’s attorneys highlighted the constitutional legal precedent that provides the rationale North Carolina’s Republican legislature needs to deliver that state’s electors to Donald Trump this November.
You can hear Rep. Andy Harris’s comments here:
Breaking! @freedomcaucus chairman @RepAndyHarrisMD at Talbot County Lincoln Reagan Dinner agrees that NC Speaker of the House @NCHouseSpeaker and the State Legislature should convene a joint session to allocate the electors on Nov 5 directly to ensure the franchise of 25… pic.twitter.com/Se5Dj0hLTD
— Ivan Raiklin (@IvanRaiklin) October 25, 2024
