Suppose the one man intent on destroying the sovreignity of our nation has just been elected as our next president. Who can stop him?
CHAPTER ONE
ELECTION DAY, 09:02 P.M.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Two older looking gentlemen wearing luxurious business suits, one being of Caucasian extraction and the other bearing dominant Asian features, were sitting in identical brown recliners in front of a burning fireplace in a wood-paneled den of a two-story townhouse in the exclusive Georgetown area of the nation’s capital on a blustery cold night in which the citizens of the United States were going to their respective voting precincts throughout the country to make the choice of who gets to be their next president. The two men’s eyes and attention were situated to their left as a television set in the room was on and tuned to the Global News Network cable channel that was broadcasting the latest voting tabulations now that the polls had closed in every state of the nation with the exception of those in the west and Alaska and Hawaii. The results so far indicated that the race between the incumbent president seeking a second term in office and his opponent, the senior U.
S. senator from the state of Michigan, was neck and neck and the television broadcasters, political experts and beltway pundits were predicting what could be the closest presidential election in United States history with more exciting, up to the minute details to follow right after the viewers spend their time watching a brief commercial break.
The Caucasian shifted his eyes from the television when the commercials came on, turning to address the Asian staring back at him. “How does it look like it will go, my friend? Two years of my life campaigning all over the country have gone into this effort and I don’t want our side to come up short.”
“It should not, my friend,” the Asian responded. “I’ve got those in the know over at Voters Reporting Syndicate carefully monitoring the tabulation at all of the state capitols and they have been instructed to delay as long as possible calling the states that are leaning to your opponent.”
“But you know the major television networks won’t stand for that very long,” the Caucasian countered. “The networks will go with their own backup contacts at the voting tabulation sites and start making their own determination of the voters’ intent just to get the scoop on their competition, even if those guesses later turn out to be wrong.”
“Relax,” the Asian smiled. “This won’t be a repeat of your country’s 2000 presidential election. The company which tabulated that election for your TV news networks was discredited and disbanded. The company I founded to replace that entity for the news networks have corrected those mistakes and will call the election on a timely and correct basis.”
“Which will be?”
“That our side wins.”
The commercials being broadcast on the television ended and election coverage resumed with the so-called political pundits predicting this election was going to be so close that it could be classified as the tightest race in the annals of presidential campaign history. They then recapped the story that once the fall presidential campaign began in early September following the two political parties nominating conventions in the summer both nominees for president campaigned hard and vigorously throughout all fifty states and the polls taken daily crisscrossed back and forth between the two men as neither ever enjoyed a double-digit lead in voting preference in the ten-week campaign season from Labor Day to Election Day. Three debates held in Ohio, Kansas and Utah on consecutive Sundays in October offered the voters a chance to examine the respective candidates’ styles, thoughts and opinions on issues facing the country and world and each politician held their own during th
e debates, not making an on-air gaffe that could prove fatal to their chances.
By the time Election Day was reached in early November at
the conclusion of the fall campaign well over one hundred million voters across the country were expected to spend some part of their Tuesday casting a preference in all sorts of political races, including the selecting of the next President of the United States. The incumbent spent Election Day morning in his home state so to be photographed casting his ballot at his local precinct in his hometown before boarding Air Force One to fly back to Washington and await the results of the ballot box from the comforts found in the White House. His opponent, the senior senator from Michigan, voted at a precinct situated at an elementary school near his family home in Grand Rapids before he and his wife and top staff took a chartered jet to the nation’s capital to also await the verdict of the public at his private residence, away from the broadcast media’s intrusive cameras.
The polls began closing first in the states on the eastern seaboard and the tightness of the race to get the majority of the 538 Electoral College electors being selected by the fifty states and District of Columbia became apparent almost immediately to the experts monitoring the contest. The smaller states were the first to designate their presidential preferences. Maine and New Hampshire went for the incumbent while Rhode Island and the District of Columbia voted overwhelmingly for the challenger. By nine p.m. eastern time the TV newscasters were reporting that the challenger was narrowly leading and should win Pennsylvania while the incumbent was going to take Florida and Connecticut with New York too close to call that early in the evening as more tabulations and voter preference data were needed to be examined by the news networks and their experts at Voters Reporting Syndicate that was monitoring the vote counting across the country for the large media outlets.
When a clock on a wall in the room reached ten o’clock and a bell inside the device chimed that event the Caucasian turned to his companion who was reviewing numbers indicating voter trends from a laptop computer he was juggling on top of his knees. “How does it look like it will go? Do we have enough votes in the states that still matter?”
The Asian shrugged. “We still don’t know. It’s too early to tell as there is still voting going on out west.”
“So it’s going to come down to who wins in California?”
Both men silently acknowledged the fact that California, as the nation’s most populated state with its fifty-five Electoral College votes comprising a tad over twenty percent of what a candidate needs to win the presidency, would be the deciding state in this election. As time moved on through the late evening the TV broadcasters resumed reporting the results from each state as counting continued and the tightness of the race became even closer as the national vote tally between the two went back and forth with a less than one percent difference separating the candidates of just a few hundred thousand votes out of the over one hundred and seven million ballots ultimately cast and being counted on behalf of the citizens of America.
The Caucasian watched the tallies continue being updated by the TV broadcasters, then turned to address the Asian and observed the man whispering instructions to someone via a cellular phone. The Asian noticed the glances he was receiving and put the phone down. “Who are you talking to?” the Caucasian inquired.
“My people at Voters Reporting Syndicate. I’ve reiterated my instructions to slow down announcing the results in favor of the incumbent for this last hour of voting going on in California and other west coast states in hopes of discouraging the last minute voters in his camp from going to the polls if they think it’s not worth it if it appears that he’s going down to defeat.”
“Good thinking. What is the tally right now?”
The Asian glanced at his laptop for the updated numbers. “The incumbent has a one hundred fifty thousand vote lead in the national tally but at least fifteen states are still listed as undecided in the electoral count. It’s still too close to call.”
“Can we make certain the remaining votes to be counted go our way?”
“Well,” the Asian began, “in a democracy it’s not the ones who votes that counts, but the one who counts the votes that is truly important when determining who rules. And the one counting the votes in this election happens to be me.”
“How apropos,” the Caucasian acknowledged.
Two additional hours elapsed as the by now exasperated television broadcasters were taking their ulcer medicines during the ever increasing commercial breaks while trying to keep up with the frenzy occurring with the current vote tabulations now pouring in from all fifty states. The incumbent was 700,000 votes ahead of his opponent in the national tally and 190,000 votes in the lead in the important state of California as the winner of that state should have the Electoral College majority and be declared the next president. Then the broadcasters went apoplectic when it was revealed that the California Secretary of State’s office had announced it was having trouble receiving full and accurate tabulation results from the northern area of the state due to phone lines being down following a fire at a telephone communications relay center near downtown San Francisco.
“Do we have the necessary numbers from our base voters in Los Angeles and San Francisco to stop any gains made by the incumbent from the more conservative voters residing in the central valleys of California?” the Caucasian asked, after both men heard the announcement of the vote counting delays in the
nation’s most populated state.
“I have my people working on it,” the Asian explained. “I’ve ordered the data entry operators at VRS to stop projecting or at least delay as long as possible the vote tallies by the incumbent in other close states that he is leading so we can see if we can find additional votes to counter his expected gains from precincts in the middle of California.”
“If that’s what it takes,” the Caucasian glumly answered as the Asian began speaking into his phone to relay instructions to his subordinates on what needed to be done.
It was almost nine a.m. Wednesday on the east coast and reaching six a.m. out west when the tired and increasingly irritable broadcasters were calming down as returns were finally coming in a fast and furious pace. They were now able to predict that the incumbent president was going to squeak out a victory over his opponent and carry the state of California with its fifty-five Electoral College votes by a razor-thin margin of just over 160,000 votes. The news anchor then switched to a reporter broadcasting from the newly crowned winner’s campaign headquarters where the fans and supporters of the incumbent were screaming and cheering upon the news that all of the TV networks had projected their candidate to be the winner by an electoral vote of 283 for him and 255 for the challenger.
“We’ve spent a lot of time, effort and money for this day to arrive and yet we have failed by fifteen electoral votes,” the Caucasian spoke with finality and disgust as they continued to watch the broadcasters proclaiming the incumbent president as having successfully won re-election. “Should we concede now, then regroup in four years for another try at the brass ring?”
“Not yet,” countered the Asian. “We now have to go to the backup plan to ensure our win in this election.”
“The backup plan? What does that entail?”
“As a student of history you should be aware that the Founding Fathers of your country decided that the average American citizen should not decide who shall be elected to serve as their president. Your voters merely select the delegates to sit on the Electoral College and it is those delegates who meet in mid-December of that election year to choose the next chief executive. If no one gets a majority of those electors, then it goes to your House of Representatives and Senate to decide who shall be picked as president and vice-president. You should know that, my friend.”
“Yes, there have been several close races in our election history that were ultimately decided in the House of Representatives, with the most famous close race of all being in 1876 when Rutherford Hayes lost the popular vote yet won the right amount of Electoral College delegates to give him a one vote electoral win over his opponent Samuel Tilden. I don’t see that happening here.”
“But isn’t there precedence for Electoral College delegates to switch their vote from one candidate to another?”
“True, but that was a long time ago and now when the Electoral College meets to select their state’s presidential preference it’s usually just a formality, based on ceremonial tradition. The delegates to the Electoral College are chosen from the winning party’s own elite members and they rarely change their vote once the state’s preference has been designated by the voters on Election Day.”
“But it has happened on occasion, correct? Several times over the years haven’t there been electors who have voted for a candidate other than who they were delegated to by that state’s voters?”
“Yes, that has happened occasionally over the centuries but usually it’s just one or two electors making some type of outrageous political statement as the reason for switching their vote from the intended candidate to someone else.”
“If I recall from your history books that in the 1960 election fifteen electors abandoned John Kennedy and voted for Senator Harry Bird of Virginia as a protest. And there have been others, yes?”
“Yes, that’s true but those renegade electors have never affected the outcome of an election. In this case we’re fifteen votes short of obtaining a majority in the Electoral College to give us the win. How do you plan to get fifteen delegates to switch by the time they announce their preferences on December Eighteenth?”
“I have already taken that possibility into consideration and have my people working on it,” the Asian smiled. “Don’t concede anything, pending a recount in several states that we can arrange through our paid operatives, who will file objection notices with the various officials of the different states in question during this short term while we work on getting the necessary electors to switch to our side.”
“I’m not sure I want the country to go through another election debacle. Would it really be worth putting the American citizens through that nightmare again?”
“What about all that we have worked for over these past three decades?” the Asian demanded. “Too much time and money have been put into this endeavor to call it quits now.”
The Caucasian stood up to stretch his legs as the Asian continued gazing at the remaining burning embers emanating from the fireplace when an another, younger looking Caucasian male with brown hair and blue eyes and was taller than both men already in the room, approached the pair then leaned over to the older Caucasian and began speaking to him in a whisper. “Sir, the press are awaiting a statement from you at the campaign headquarters regarding the returns so far. Time constraints indicate we should make an appearance for the television networks right away to get the momentum rolling our way if we imply there were election irregularities as we work on getting public opinion behind us and the networks are projecting the largest viewing audience possible right now to get that going.”
“Very well,” the older Caucasian voiced as he prepared to leave. He turned to face his Asian companion. “My supporters await me. Is what you propose the last best chance for us to win the White House?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it is,” the Asian nodded. “It’s now or never with you. There will be no second try. What will your decision be?”
“Now!” the Caucasian defiantly exclaimed. Both men stood up to shake hands before embracing. “Let’s do it, my old friend. I will not go out and concede the election but instead demand a recount in California and several other states to buy us time so you can implement your plan.”
“I will get started on persuading the necessary amount of electors needed to switch to you. We must win this election to ensure the plans developed over the last three decades are finally implemented for the betterment of this country and the world.”
“See to it that it is done.”
“I will, and let me be the first to salute you with the title ‘Mr. President.’”
“Thank you. I just hope it’s not too premature at this point.”
“It’s not,” the Asian grinned as he removed a CD-ROM disc from his pocket and waved it at his friend. “A title you rightly deserve but don’t forget it is also something that I have worked and paid for to achieve for the past thirty plus years of time. You shall be sworn-in as president if it’s the last thing I do. I guarantee it.”
Copyright 2008 Terry Heath. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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