Arizona is a key state in the US presidential elections, and its Attorney General has the power to challenge certifications in court if they violate state law, and must approve regulations governing the way elections are conducted. This has attracted record amounts of money and attention from Democrats and Republicans. The Supreme Court's decision to end women's constitutional right to abortion has also triggered donations, and across the country, elections for attorneys general are attracting more attention and money overall because of their ability to enforce or block controversial policies. Senator Amy Klobuchar has highlighted the importance of electing officials who are critical to front-line protection when it comes to voting and elections. However, Attorney General Hamadeh downplayed his role in electoral certification, stating that his opponent Mayes was trying to undermine his commitment to the country and democratic processes.
The nomination of dozens of Republicans who support Trump's false allegations of fraud for local and state offices across the country in November has brought unprecedented attention to the elections in favor of battleground states such as Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Tammy Patrick, a former federal enforcement official with the Department of Elections in Maricopa County, Arizona's most populous county, said that if the governor or secretary of state tries to certify a result that doesn't reflect the actual total votes, then the position of attorney general is vital. Stefanie Lindquist, professor of law and politics at Arizona State University, said that the attorney general has the authority to sue to enforce the state's election laws through civil or criminal actions. In the end, only Baca and nine others, many of them Clinton and not Trump voters, tried to vote for people other than the winner of the popular vote in their respective states. It is perceived that a subsidiary objective of Wegman's book is to return Wilson to his rightful place in constitutional history.
But if President Trump had received 11,000 more votes in Arizona, 13,000 more in Georgia and 20,000 more in Wisconsin, 37 electoral votes would have moved to his column, resulting in a tie (269 to 26) in the Electoral College. In the early days of COVID-19, Trump downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic with the explicit argument that its initial impact was more serious in blue states. Electoral votes in four states remained in dispute for months, and neither the Constitution nor federal law provided any clear mechanism for resolving them. But only forty-four thousand more Trump votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin would have resulted in a 269 to 269 tie in the Electoral College. The Pact itself undermines popular sovereignty by ignoring the will of the state electorate in favor of the preferences of voters in other states. It then establishes a multi-step process in which voters must “meet in their respective States to “vote by vote for two people”, then transmit those sealed votes “to the Headquarters of the United States Government”.
But more importantly, that executive would not be popularly elected; rather it would be elected by special “electors” appointed by each state legislature. Joe Biden won the national popular vote by approximately seven million votes and won the Electoral College 306-232. Narrow victories in these key states propelled Biden to presidency. The first was the election of 1824, in which Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams (41 percent to 31 percent) in both popular vote and by a comfortable margin in Electoral College. Wegman recognizes that each story reflects a real dynamic at play during Philadelphia's summer of 1787 but his narrative mostly supports that it was a hasty solution arrived at by delegates who ran out of time to come up with a better one.
In conclusion, it is clear that democracy is heavily impacted by electoral college as it can determine who will become president even if they don't win popular vote.
