June, 2020
Washington – The following letter is being sent to the governors of six election battleground states: North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
Dear Governor:
The upcoming November general elections will test American democracy as never before. Can your state conduct a free and fair election, or will it be fraudulent?
As I write this, the Trump campaign is enlisting 50,000 people to disrupt polling places and planning to spend $20 million on tying up the courts in election litigation, so as to make certain the President wins the electoral college vote. The effort is only thinly disguised. Our foreign adversaries are also using social media, as they did in 2016, to re-elect a president they know is weak and manipulable toward their own ends.
I know you are aware of this and are working to protect the integrity of your state's election. However, there must be no assumption that you will succeed. The question is, what will you do if and when your state's election is thrown into chaos?
It is time to explore your state's options under the Constitution and under federal and state statutes. I am a political scientist and find more questions than answers about options, and few precedents.
The Constitution clearly anticipates situations in which the electoral college cannot produce a winner and provides the alternative of an election in the House. Would one of those situations be state abstention for lack of ability to conduct a free and fair election? I believe so; it is at least worth a full legal analysis. That would seem preferable to the 1836 precedent when Virginia threw the vice-presidential selection into the Senate by choosing electors for a candidate that did not win the general election, and to the 2000 precedent when Florida prematurely choose electors before a re-count was completed.
So I ask you to do the legal homework on the question as it pertains to your state, and to other battleground states as well, in case there should be collective consideration in view of widespread election chaos. Moreover, if you would announce now that you are inviting certified election monitors to assess the conduct of your election, so as to convey a message that you will not be without remedies against election tampering, it would discourage those who think elections can be stolen by disinformation, intimidation, creation of confusion, and endless litigation.
Yours sincerely,
Jon H. Oberg
