Mercury Goes Retrograde and
the Electoral College Votes
Mercury Retrograde is Murphy’s Law inside a Pandora’s box riddled with snafus.
— Kat Lane
On Monday, December 19th, members of the Electoral College will cast their votes for President.
It's also the day that Mercury goes Retrograde. Can this thrice-yearly event have any bearing on the presidential election? Could it possibly reverse the results? We've all seen the petitions urging Electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote. My thinking has been, if the Electors didn’t act to correct the grievous wrong that handed the presidency to Bush in 2000, what would motivate them now?
Well, Mercury's Retrograde might be a factor. As an example of the type of reversals of fortune mischievous Mercury can create, we only have to look at that infamous 2000 Presidential “Election.” As people went to the polls on November 7th, 2000, Mercury, winding up a 3-week Retrograde cycle, was about to change its course—and history’s.
“Between 7:49 p.m. and 8 p.m. EST, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, ABC and The Associated Press all called Florida, with its decisive 25 electoral votes, for Gore.” —CNN
But at precisely 9:28 pm, Mercury switched gears: It snapped out of reverse, pulled into drive and turned the entire election on its head.
“CNN put Florida [back] in the undecided category at 9:50 p.m. and others followed suit. VNS [Voter News Service] retracted its Gore projection at 10:13 p.m.” —CNN
It was only after Mercury began moving forward that the election was called for Bush. And although this too was a premature projection, with Mercury now moving ahead, there would be no more reversals. With that last call, Newscasters made Bush the presumptive winner, Gore was relegated to the more difficult position of challenger and the rest, as they say, is history.
Will Mercury turn this election on its head? While changing the results of the election is not likely, I’d be happy if Mercury’s turnabout caused just enough havoc to disrupt the Electoral College itself. It’s time for this quirk of our democracy to go the way of slavery and powdered wigs, which after all, is responsible for the antiquated system we have today. The slavery, not the powdered wigs.
Read more about the connection between slavery and the Electoral College at http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
PS If you want to know how to survive the next 4 years, I can’t help you with that. But if you want to learn how to survive the next 3 weeks of Mercury’s Retrograde, click here to sign up for a free email MercAlert! It’s a start.