Electoral College members request information regarding Russian hacks

Ten Electoral College members have requested an intelligence briefing on Russia’s meddling in the U.S. presidential election, a week before the group is scheduled to formally certify the results.

The bipartisan group made their case to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in an open letter Monday, arguing that the information is essential to their duties as electors who are tasked to “elect a president who is constitutionally qualified and fit to serve.”

Citing Alexander Hamilton’s writing in The Federalist Papers, the electors argue Russian interference in the election must factor into their decision. In Federalist #68, Hamilton charged the Electoral College with preventing a “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”

The Washington Post published details Friday of a CIA report that concluded Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win. The Trump camp responded by dismissing the report outright, despite calls from across the aisle for a more thorough investigation.

In a statement Monday, Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said he supports the electors’ efforts to seek more detailed information.

“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in the statement. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/electoral-college-intelligence-briefing-russia-election_us_584ee466e4b0e05aded4da1b

This is an interesting turn of events.

It is hard to Imagine the EC reversing the result now though

It would be fascinating to see how people would react if they did. Really, the whole point of the EC is to change the result if they feel the winner isn't up to the job. If the public were so outraged by a change then they should support scrapping the EC altogether anyway.

This is a slim hope though.

The Electoral College is a group of people elected to elect the president.  I hardly think they are challenging their own raison d'ê·tre.

I suggest a closer look.  Perchance the "bipartisan group" is a gang of Democrats, and a couple of disgruntled Jeb Bush supporters, eh?

Without a ground swell that amounts to a near revolution, no one is going to challenge the Electoral College results.  It's Constitutional, fcs.  And to demand the election be investigated would require pitchforks at the gates.  It ain't gonna happen.

Original Quill wrote:The Electoral College is a group of people elected to elect the president.  I hardly think they are challenging their own raison d'ê·tre.

I suggest a closer look.  Perchance the "bipartisan group" is a gang of Democrats, and a couple of disgruntled Jeb Bush supporters, eh?

Without a ground swell that amounts to a near revolution, no one is going to challenge the Electoral College results.  It's Constitutional, fcs.  And to demand the election be investigated would require pitchforks at the gates.  It ain't gonna happen.

Well, you certainly seem eager to roll over and accept Russian control of the White House ...

surely this Commie Puppet will enrage the old school republicans. 
let alone 'the Bush and Clinton Camp' that has had both their candidates defeated.
and dems obviously hate trump...
and he is losing he mad hatter supporters by being too 'reasonable'

could be pitchforks yet?

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:The Electoral College is a group of people elected to elect the president.  I hardly think they are challenging their own raison d'ê·tre.

I suggest a closer look.  Perchance the "bipartisan group" is a gang of Democrats, and a couple of disgruntled Jeb Bush supporters, eh?

Without a ground swell that amounts to a near revolution, no one is going to challenge the Electoral College results.  It's Constitutional, fcs.  And to demand the election be investigated would require pitchforks at the gates.  It ain't gonna happen.

Well, you certainly seem eager to roll over and accept Russian control of the White House ...

Sorry. Facts are not always to my liking, either. Read my post of the Jacques Vallée thesis on challenging government authority.

For the sake of one election, you put at risk the entire system of presidential determination. Since the facts are still up in the air, no one is going to toss that to the wind.

veya_victaous wrote:
surely this Commie Puppet will enrage the old school republicans. 
let alone 'the Bush and Clinton Camp' that has had both their candidates defeated.
and dems obviously hate trump...
and he is losing he mad hatter supporters by being too 'reasonable'

could be pitchforks yet?

EXCEPT that Putin and his gang aren't "Commies",  these days...

Being the centre-right dictatorial nationalists and isolationalists that they are nowadays,  maybe --  just maybe  --   both the Putin regime and those GOP demagogues supporting the Trumpster brigade, have a certain amount of mutual respect going on in there..

Seeing their own collective failings and shortcomings being reflected in the other  ?      

@wolf
the voted for trump
POST TRUTH SOCIETY

they are russian therefore commie 

Original Quill wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:The Electoral College is a group of people elected to elect the president.  I hardly think they are challenging their own raison d'ê·tre.

I suggest a closer look.  Perchance the "bipartisan group" is a gang of Democrats, and a couple of disgruntled Jeb Bush supporters, eh?

Without a ground swell that amounts to a near revolution, no one is going to challenge the Electoral College results.  It's Constitutional, fcs.  And to demand the election be investigated would require pitchforks at the gates.  It ain't gonna happen.

Well, you certainly seem eager to roll over and accept Russian control of the White House ...

Sorry.  Facts are not always to my liking, either.  Read my post of the Jacques Vallée thesis on challenging government authority.

For the sake of one election, you put at risk the entire system of presidential determination.  Since the facts are still up in the air, no one is going to toss that to the wind.

If I can't convince you this is worth fighting with the following image, I give up:

Ben Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Sorry.  Facts are not always to my liking, either.  Read my post of the Jacques Vallée thesis on challenging government authority.

For the sake of one election, you put at risk the entire system of presidential determination.  Since the facts are still up in the air, no one is going to toss that to the wind.

If I can't convince you this is worth fighting with the following image, I give up:

Haha...

Seriously...give me something to fight for. I don't like pussy-grabber any more than you. But it's not just him, it's 240-years of tradition.

How about the next 40 years?

Ben Reilly wrote:How about the next 40 years?

Look...a lot of precedents have been broken recently. Stranger things could yet be coming.

The Obama admin and his flunkies have been hacked for years. It takes a lost election for them to start taking it seriously.

That's what you get for having a "lead from behind" president.
Good riddance.

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:
The Obama admin and his flunkies have been hacked for years.  It takes a lost election for them to start taking it seriously.

That's what you get for having a "lead from behind" president.  
Good riddance.

THE OUTRIGHT LIES, anti-democratic nonsense and pro-fascist feelings that you spout everytime you crawl onto this forum, Ms Idiotic Thoughtbubbles, only goes to expose what you truly are...

Nothing more than yet another Republican suck up, humanity hating, corporate inspired, spamming troll..

I have yet to witness any actual independence or rational thinking originating from your keyboard.

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:The Obama admin and his flunkies have been hacked for years.  It takes a lost election for them to start taking it seriously.

That's what you get for having a "lead from behind" president.  
Good riddance.

Yeah, I don't think you've got your facts straight.  Vote rigging via the Internet is a new phenomenon...there is no evidence that a presidential election has ever been electronically rigged before.  Of course, there's always been hacking, but everybody knew that, including Obama.

I think you are just bootstrapping yourself into a position to take cheap shots at the greatest president the US has ever had.  Frankly, I don't blame you...with Bush on the one side, and pussy-grabber on the other side, Republicans have got to do something to clean up their image.  

But, like pussy-grabber himself, you've taken to inventing your facts.  Hacking didn't start during the Obama administration.  Three Polish cryptologists broke the Enigma machine code as far back as 1932.  Since WWII, the US government has been quite active in running down hackers.  The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) was enacted by Congress in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984.  Obama only came in in 2008...it was hardly started during his administration..

QA wrote:Vote rigging via the Internet is a new phenomenon...

Who said that anyone rigged or hacked votes? And who has produced evidence of such?
Conspiracy theory imagination much? Better take off the tin-foil hats. Especially when microwaving popcorn.

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:

QA wrote:Vote rigging via the Internet is a new phenomenon...

Who said that anyone rigged or hacked votes?  And who has produced evidence of such?
Conspiracy theory imagination much?  Better take off the tin-foil hats.  Especially when microwaving popcorn.

Did you check your American citizenship card for the sake of partisanship? Do you want to cede sovereignty to Russia if it gets your team into power?

Not sure if you've noticed, Ben, but Trump and his constituents have a protectionist attitude. Pro America. America First. Bring back national exceptionalism.

Do you really think that they want to cede sovereignty to Russia? It's an easy question...

See the absurdity of this?

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:

QA wrote:Vote rigging via the Internet is a new phenomenon...

Who said that anyone rigged or hacked votes?  And who has produced evidence of such?
Conspiracy theory imagination much?  Better take off the tin-foil hats.  Especially when microwaving popcorn.

I"m pretty sure it's on every one's mind as such. Pussy-grabber lost by nearly 3-million votes, and yet he managed to steer his way into tiny pockets of voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, that won him the elusive and improbable electoral college. That's strange. So they are investigating.

"Tin-foil hats"? "Microwaving popcorn"? "Conspiracy theory imagination"? You're doing what all conservatives do when in a difficult spot: resort to jingoism in lieu of reasoning. You want to run away from the question rather than dealing with it. You're going straight to final arguments, before all the evidence is heard.

That's what Trump wants to do, too...avoid asking the question. He is more afraid of the direction things are going than we are. He does a lot of hiding and ducking...where are his tax returns that would tell us all about all his conflicts of interest and emoluments? His attempts to avoid having a curiosity about strange patterns in election returns is a bit too suspicious.

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:Not sure if you've noticed, Ben, but Trump and his constituents have a protectionist attitude.  Pro America.

Trump is no more pro American than the man in the moon. Except real estate--which is permanently fixed--he deals exclusively off-shore himself in his businesses.

America First = White First. His slogan "Make America Great Again' was dog whistle for "Make America White Again." He was appealing to racism.

I will admit, Trump was adept at gathering together all the losers in America and getting them to blow a huge wind into his sails. But like the wind, they are a damn nuisance once he has reached the shore.

IT wrote:Bring back national exceptionalism.

WTF is "national exceptionalism"? It sounds suspiciously like "American exceptionalism", that neoconservative concept of that got us into the Iraq War:

Google wrote:Neoconservative (also spelled "neo-conservative"; colloquially, neocon) in American politics is someone presented as a conservative but who actually favors big government, interventionalism, and a hostility to religion in politics and government. The word means "newly conservative," and thus formerly liberal. Sep 2, 2016

Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, John R. Bolton, Richard Perle and Paul Bremer. Senior officials Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, all are neo-cons who started this whole mess in the Middle East. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

IT wrote:Do you really think that they want to cede sovereignty to Russia?  It's an easy question...

See the absurdity of this?

Yes. He is not sophisticated enough to know international politics, so right now he has no geopolitical policy. Trump wants what will enrich Trump Industries...that's the level he is at.

Yeah, ok... uh hum... yep... sure.

I heard what you had to say. Did the alien voices in your head make you say that? They must have, because I've not seen any evidence from you or the press that even remotely validates anything you've said. It's all in your head. Or a comic book. You may have read this in a comic book. Garfield, perhaps?

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:Yeah, ok... uh hum... yep... sure.

I heard what you had to say.  Did the alien voices in your head make you say that?  They must have, because I've not seen any evidence from you or the press that even remotely validates anything you've said.  It's all in your head.  Or a comic book.  You may have read this in a comic book.  Garfield, perhaps?

You are the evidence of the ineptness of the right.  So far, you've done nothing but defend your man with quips and jingles, and that ain't progress.  You have no positive program, no original thought...you sit around and think up clever come-backs, but have no program yourself.  Essentially, you are a yipper dog, nipping at the heels of real people who are doing real things--albeit, on a level you don't understand.

Meanwhile, there is an earthquake brewing...a genuine political crisis of anti-constitutional proportions.  I didn't say unconstitutional, but anti-constitutional: to work for something that defeats the purpose of the Constitution, the foundation...not merely defies the other side.  You are applauding a train that has lost its engineer and you don't even realize it.  You don't comprehend that what is done today, can be duplicated tomorrow by the exact other side.  We are concerned about an earthquake, and you think it's a ping pong game.

You refer to the founders and their wisdom, yet you celebrate their proven failure.  You are not an American, you are a jester who lives in America.  You so utterly fail to understand America that you don't even know what's happening.  So far from making constitutional arguments, what you are doing is gloating over the defeat of the US Constitution...and you don't even realize it.

Pussy-grabber, with the help of his Russian friends, has managed to show that the Constitution doesn't work.  It can be exploited and manipulated in ways that defeat general democracy.  If it can be done today, it will be done tomorrow.  Oh, you will kick and scream when it happens to you, but only when it's too late.  You don't realize that the time to fight is right now.  You are so into being clever, that you have forgotten to be smart.

Everyone.  Notice.
Above my post is one made by someone whose beliefs are made of sheer conjecture and assumptions.  Notice how off-the-hinges and crazy his post is.  Nuttier than squirrel-poop, huh?
You DO NOT want to sound like this guy. Especially in public.  People will look at you like you're an imbecile.  So will Security.  They are paid to escort mentally unstable people like this all the time.  Do NOT sound like the guy in the post above me. Especially if they're this crazy and they insist on you addressing them as "Doctor".

You're welcome.

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:Everyone.  Notice.
Above my post is one made by someone whose beliefs are made of sheer conjecture and assumptions.  Notice how off-the-hinges and crazy his post is.  Nuttier than squirrel-poop, huh?
You DO NOT want to sound like this guy. Especially in public.  People will look at you like you're an imbecile.  So will Security.  They are paid to escort mentally unstable people like this all the time.  Do NOT sound like the guy in the post above me. Especially if they're this crazy and they insist on you addressing them as "Doctor".  

You're welcome.

I would much rather sound educated and erudite, like Quill, than resort to your "mean 13-year-old girl" method of debate.

What debate? That's like someone saying that Martians, disguised as humans, have taken over the Democratic Party. How do you debate that???

Quill is on a conspiracy theory mission. You can't be rational with irrational people.