The Wisconsin Republican electors are meeting today, voting for Trump and sending their certificate in to Congress for counting on January 6th.
Now we know Congress will reject that certificate - because the Democrats control the House and at least five Republican Senators have said they accept Biden as the winner.
But if the Republicans controlled both Houses and all their Congressmen were united then they absolutely could vote to accept the Wisconsin certificate of votes for Trump.
I haven't followed the debate re Betfair closely - but even now couldn't they say "Well two certificates have gone to Congress for Wisconsin - we don't yet know which certificate they will accept"
I'm not sure whether Republican electors for PA, MI and GA are also sending their own certificates to Congress.
Irrespective of this election, there is surely now a massive problem going forward in that if one Party controls both Houses they can ensure their candidate wins the Presidency (if Party united in doing so). So should Biden try to reform the Electoral Count Act?
To be fair, there is precedent for this. In 1960 the result in Hawaii, the first time the newly-minted state participated in a Presidential election, was very close, initially going to Nixon, and was being recounted when the Electoral College met on December 19th of that year. Two sets of electors convened, one Republican and one Democratic. The Republican Governor of Hawaii certified the Republican results, but when the recount was complete it was shown that Kennedy had won the state's electors by just 115 votes. The courts ruled that the Governor should send a new certificate to that effect, and he finally did so on January 4th, just two days before the Electoral College vote count. Presented with two certificates, Nixon, as sitting VP and thus presiding officer of the count, awarded the votes to Kennedy and Johnson. There were no objections.
Today I have learnt a fun factoid which I can now incessantly bore everyone with!
Reports tonight that Merkel is in some difficulty especially over the delay in the vaccine while apparently the first German to be vaccinated has been in the UK
Europe is in a gathering crisis as member states see the roll out of the vaccine both here, in Canada and the US but not in the EU
If the Germans are unhappy with Merkel, and looking enviously across the Channel, can we do a contra deal with Germany please? Johnson for Mrs Merkel.
You can have Merkel once a new German government is formed in about 12 months, but you can do what you like with Johnson, we're not gonna take him!
We need to lockdown now. This is October all over again.
It's weird - if they'd just extended lockdown to, say, now, then even though in actuality the cases would be rising again the lag would have meant it looked ok to have a Christmas hall pass.
If they were that set on Christmas, why not tell everyone 'Lockdown is being extended 2 more weeks, so you can have Christmas'?
Shopping.
Even though we've done it online already.
Given you can't meet people to give them personally, we have massively bought presents much earlier so we can post them out well ahead of Christmas.
Based on Scotland's relatively stable tier system.
You need Tier 3 if you have medium (50-200 cases/100 000/week) and want to keep those rates steady
Tier 4/lockdown if you have >200 cases cases/100 000/week and need to get them down quickly.
If you go to Tier 2, cases will rise and you will need to go back to Tier 3 a couple of weeks later (or Tier 4 if you leave it too long)
Tier 3 is the default at current compliance rates.
Yep, except Edinburgh is currently trying to prove that even level 3 might not be sufficient. 65/week/100,000 at start of December, now over 100 and rising. Hopefully things will calm down after the Christmas shopping.
It does depend on what people collectively do. Also real boondock places can manage quite happily on Tier 2 or even Tier 1. Still, Tier 3 by default is a fairly good rule of thumb. Good news in Scotland on Glasgow and Lanarkshire, which had stubbornly high case rates. Their spell in Tier 4, while presumably grim has brought the case rates down. Hopefully they will stay there under Tier 3.
I would be shocked if Johnson rowed back on Christmas. His libertarian instincts would make cancelling Christmas a big ask.
Who says anything about cancelling it? Smaller, yes. And a good excuse not to have the in-laws around.
I think Boris will stick with the Christmas arrangements although on the face of it, it is not a good idea.
A lot of people will be minimising arrangements, well within the guidance.
I am expecting a lockdown from 28 Dec, harder than the one we have just had, and we may need to keep it in place until end Feb. By end Feb hopefully a large proportion of the 65+ will have had their second vaccine so the exposure to deaths/hospitalisations will be much lower from March.
Also need to consider keeping schools 'online only' for first half term 2021 ie up to late Feb, I know it's not ideal.
There is not a politician in the land who is in charge and who is willing to close schools.
It is insane shibboleth. Secondary teachers are close to total revolt.
It's one of those inconvienient truths that the virus spreads very nicely indeed round schools.
I mean, it is fairly clear that Primary Schools are not super spreader locations but Secondary schools are just the pits.
The insane thing is that the secondary teachers I have spoken too are confident that the kids are getting a worse education being back full time than they would be 50/50 because the total lack of interaction the Covid restrictions bring just destroys the point of being in full time.
Is it clear? My daughter is in one local primary school and my wife works at another. Covid has ripped through both schools - at least half of each school's bubbles have been off at one time or another with half a dozen or so teachers.
There is of course a difference between infections and transmission vectors.
I don’t have the recent data on primary schools to say how infectious they are. What is clear is that it’s storming through secondary schools like you can’t believe it. If the government enforced isolation in schools the way they do in the wider community half of all secondary schools would have had to shut this half term,
We have had several cases, but so far no confirmed transmission within the school.
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Not the only one. Media starting to turn against 'Save Xmas' policy?
Given you can't meet people to give them personally, we have massively bought presents much earlier so we can post them out well ahead of Christmas.
Pedant's corner... a virus doesn't mutate to do anything. It just happens.
"If your turkey weighs 792kg, you need to put it in the oven NOW."
Family gatherings may well be in jeapordy though. Rightly.
Will be very disappointed if Dorset doesn't go down to T1 this week.
But people are going to do what they want - covid boredom is too widespread.