WHAT IF.... A theory of the End Game for the 2020 Election...including a long story for context.

Good morning GLP friends and foes!

Retirement is grand. I never thought my favorite part of not "working" anymore would be chopping and stacking wood and listening to podcasts.

If you'd let me, I'd like to take a few minutes of your day to lay out a possible scenario and please (as the internet will always do, see Cunningham's Law) correct me if any of my speculation is incorrect/misinformed.

It appears that Trump's plan is to challenge (through the courts) the legitimacy of several key states' election results, eventually leading to the SCOTUS where three of Trump's picks worked together on a similar situation in 2000 Bush v. Gore.

[link to www.cnn.com (secure)]

This would eventually lead to neither candidate reaching 270 electoral votes, which would activate the second half of the 12th amendment, putting the vote for the President in the hands of the House of Representatives, not by individual representative, but by state. Republicans control 26 state delegations, while Democrats hold 23.

[link to www.law.cornell.edu (secure)]

So Trump becomes president again and we "MAGA" for four more years/fall headlong into civil war, right?

Well...not necessarily, and let me explain why with a little story. In my mid 40s I got duped into being on the board of directors for a fairly large, multi-state non-profit. A professional acquaintance (lets call him Rick) was on the board, a seat was opening up and Rick asked if I'd be interested in joining the board. I won't go into too much details as I enjoy a bit of internet anonymity but if you live or work in Washington State, Oregon or Northern Cali you would recognize the name. I only say that to say that my initial reaction was "oh wow, these guys are big and legit, seems like a good idea to give back and help a good cause." The process was akin to a job interview, I had a panel interview that went great (don't mean to toot my own horn but I was a shoe in) and then a full background check (for D&O insurance). Some paperwork later I was a board member with a fancy head shot on their website and everything. Important to note, I was the eighth board member, and I would learn that as per our bylaws 8 was the minimum. This explained why the board seemed a bit rushed to fill the seat. And here I thought I was special.

A day after it became official I got a call from Rick asking if I was interested in going out for lunch, I said sure. Couple days later I meet him at a local restaurant, except he's not alone, three of the other board members are there with him. We eat, lots of small talk and getting to know each other, ended up having lots of mutual connections (one of the guys was in the same industry so a lot of our network overlapped) and the vibe was pretty friendly. Pretty quickly the conversation turns to the politics of the board, and things going on, lots of history between the board members, some government political connections and personality conflicts and stuff, then the real stuff came out. Turned out these guys suspected that the director was sleeping with one of the board members (who just happened to be the treasurer) and that there was possible embezzlement. -THANKS RICK FOR LETTING ME KNOW-. Five or six months prior Rick had put forth a motion for an independent, third party audit to be performed yearly as part of our budget process (this practice is industry standard now for practically all $1 mil+ non-profits). I guess the motion was struck down after a tie (Rick and these three guys voting yea) and the rest voting nay, with the president getting the nay tie breaking vote. My understanding was that the excuse given by the nay board members at the time was the potential cost of the audit, and because Rick didn't have any numbers in front of them they shot it down.

Well I guess Rick and these three guys pretended to drop it and nothing else was mentioned about it. Secretly, knowing that a board seat was opening up (which I filled) they just sat on their hands and waited, hoping the new sucker (me) would vote with them the next time they brought it up, which they did, at my first board meeting. -THANKS AGIAN RICK- So for those of you who've never had to deal with the narcolepsy inducing formality of a board of directors meeting you should know it's extremely formal, everything to be discussed is printed out and handed out prior to the meeting, the president has their "Roberts rules of order" book and a copy of the bylaws sitting next to them, and to their right is the board secretary notepad and pen ready to roll. Probably a good hour of "housekeeping" as we called it, small updates on projects and staffing, each board member presenting something from their committee. Then the treasurer gives a budget update, forecast and presents any capital expenditure requests over a certain $$ limit that the director doesn't have authority to approve. This is where it all started to go down hill. I bashfully raised my hand like I was in kindergarten, was given the table and asked the simple question "what was the directors limit?".

Simple, innocent question. Well, unfortunately that question was all that was needed for me looked at with dagger eyes by the treasurer. See, in the non-profit executive world when dealing with money you only have two types of people on a board: Spenders and Savers. This wasn't a question a spender would ask, so now, new to the board, I have (in my first words officially spoken) gained the scarlet letter of a Saver. This garnered a smirk by Rick and a couple of the other guys I went to lunch with. My question was answered within a millisecond by the treasurer, "5 thousand dollars." I smiled and said thank you. The meeting moved on until the "unfinished business" section near the very end. Rick presented his motion, but this time he had some cost estimates from a reputable accounting firm out of Portland that specialized in non-profits. To me the price range seemed fair given the size of the company. Initially there was humming and hawing and some debate about the necessity of it and then the treasurer went into a diatribe about how much she hated quickbooks (this was in the mid 90s mind you) and how she was trained on peachtree and how they switched last year and she how against it she was and if this firm even knew how to use quickbooks. Meanwhile this whole time the president was flipping through the bylaws and then lit up and said that our bylaws require a minimum of 3 competitive bids for any contracted service. At this point Rick began arguing the point, saying the motion was not to accept a bid or pick a specific company but to establish the third party auditing requirements in the bylaws. In seconds the president denied the motion and the issue was dropped.

So, the cards are on the table now. Next month rolls around and lo' and behold it's November, not any November it's 1996. Our normal meeting Monday falls on voting day and most of the board (including Rick) are huge democrats excited to see Clinton get re-elected so they decided to cancel the November meeting. Ended up talking to Rick sometime in November and he indicated he didn't get the 3 needed bids, he had gotten 6, good old passive aggressive power move there. So fast forward to our Monday meeting. Upon arriving we're told the president isn't feeling well, and he wouldn't be there. So we're there waiting, and the treasurer seem to be no-shows as well. We wait for her for 15-20 minutes, then start the meeting. With the President not present the VP (the other nay board member) is running the show. We go through all the dog and pony show to get to Rick presenting his motion again, this time with the 6 bids. With the treasurer and president not there I don't think it had the impact Rick was hoping. After presenting all the bids Rick calls for the motion to be voted on. The VP shook his head and said no, Rick asked why. The VP opened the bylaws and began reading. The requirements of our bylaws to pass any motion with financial impact on the non-profit required the secret word this entire story has been leading to: Quorum.

Quorum is an interesting thing. For those of you who are unaware quorum is the minimum amount of warm bodies a governing board (based on Roberts Rules of Order) needs in order to pass motions or laws or whatever. A simple majority is 51% but a quorum is defined by whatever the rule makers say, usually 2/3rds.

Our bylaws stated the board should have a minimum of 8 board members and a maximum of 12, and quorum was defined 2/3rds with a minimum of 7. So what did that mean? We couldn't vote....well I guess we could, but it wouldn't be legally binding. So we had to wait until the next meeting. This time the treasurer was on vacation and the president was on a business trip. This went on two more months, until we our March meeting and thankfully everyone showed up. Funny thing was, our financial year ended in February, so the March meeting was the yearly budgetary meeting which was 3 hours of non-stop numbers...grants, scholarships, endowments, the works. We FINALLY get around to Rick's motion, and with sick smiles on the president and treasurers' faces, they thank Rick for his research and due diligence with all the bids and they approve the motion. After the motion was passed Rick asked for another motion to select the accounting firm, to which the president said it was unnecessary to even look at the bids this meeting due to the fact that the first audit wouldn't be performed for almost a year, to which Rick, myself and the three other board members that all went out for lunch together got wide eyed and knew at that point SOMETHING was up.

But it didn't matter. Whatever cooking of the books needed to be done was done before the audit the next year. I stayed out my 2 year term then bowed out. I enjoyed being a part of the process but something was sketchy and I didn't really feel like sticking around to find out. Come to find out years later, that treasurer was sleeping with the director, the president and several other staff members. She actually ended up in politics, guess that's what you do when you're good at screwing people.


So coming back around...


From the 12th Amendment:

But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

Do you see it? The end game? MAGA-kids think that Trump's 4D chess is going to end in the House voting him back in, but they fail to see that the true power of this process is in the QUORUM of the House, which the Republicans DO NOT HAVE. DO YOU SEE IT NOW? All the Democrats need to do is not show up to the vote in the House and the Senate and Nancy Pelosi is the 46th President of the United States. Once she gets that pen all hell will break loose (literally and figuratively) as Trump has spent the last 4 years establishing (through the backing of the SCOTUS) INSANE executive powers in executive orders. Pelosi could care less if the Senate and the House don't meet again for 4 years, she can rescind all of Trumps EO's and do pretty much whatever she wants. I'm not a Pelosi fan, she's got that Cruella de Vil meets Jezebel vibe to her, and I can only imagine what insane EO's she will write.

I guess what I'm saying is that when this is all said and done the Trumpers will wish they had rolled over and handed the (possibly stolen) election to Biden.

God save America.