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November 11, 2020 at 10:22 am #124185
ZooeyModeratorWell my Twitter feed is ablaze with fear of a Trump coup after Pompeo’s remark.
Here is David Sirota:
https://www.dailyposter.com/p/trump-is-staging-a-coup-why-are-dems
Trump Is Staging A Coup — Why Are Dems Not Sounding The Alarm?
Republicans are following a clear plan to try to overturn the election results, just like they did in 2000. And once again, Democrats are not sounding a loud enough alarm.David Sirota
The recent HBO film 537 Votes about the Florida 2000 election mess offers one overarching message: Democrats’ refusal to sound a clear alarm about the slow-motion heist in process ultimately let the election be stolen.
In that debacle, Democrats seemed to think things would break their way with well-honed arguments inside the cloistered confines of the legal system — they never understood how public-facing politics can play a role in what ultimately ended up being a pivotal political brawl outside the courtroom.
Twenty years later, the lesson of that debacle isn’t being heeded. Donald Trump and his cronies are quite clearly waging a public-facing campaign designed to create the conditions for the Electoral College process to pull off a coup.
This is a full-scale emergency — and yet the Democratic strategy seems to be to try to pretend it isn’t happening, in hopes that norms win out, even though nothing at all is normal.
Trump Has A Deliberate Strategy
In the week since the election, Trump’s and his Republican allies have waged a public campaign to call the election results into question — not just in the courtroom, but in the public’s mind. Their lawsuits and Attorney General William Barr’s recent memo are designed as much to win rulings and initiate prosecutions as they are to generate headlines. Their tweets asserting fraud, and their high-profile promises of financial reward for evidence of fraud are all designed to do the same thing.Most ominously of all, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona are already insinuating the results may be fraudulent, even though they haven’t produced any evidence of widespread fraud.
Why is public perception so important? Because as Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley shows in a frighteningly prescient 2019 article, legislatures could use the public perception of fraud to try to invoke their constitutional power to ignore their states’ popular votes, reject certified election results and appoint slates of Trump electors.
In an article that predicted almost exactly what has already happened in Pennsylvania, Foley imagined Trump seeming to be ahead at first, then losing his lead as votes are counted, then making allegations of fraud, setting the stage for this:
At Trump’s urging, the state’s legislature — where Republicans have majorities in both houses — purports to exercise its authority under Article II of the Constitution to appoint the state’s presidential electors directly. Taking their cue from Trump, both legislative chambers claim that the certified popular vote cannot be trusted because of the blue shift that occurred in overtime. Therefore, the two chambers claim to have the constitutional right to supersede the popular vote and assert direct authority to appoint the state’s presidential electors, so that this appointment is in line with the popular vote tally as it existed on Election Night, which Trump continues to claim is the “true” outcome.
The state’s Democratic governor refuses to assent to this assertion of authority by the state’s legislature, but the legislature’s two chambers proclaim that the governor’s assent is unnecessary. They cite early historical practices in which state legislatures appointed presidential electors without any involvement of the state’s governor. They argue that like constitutional amendments, and unlike ordinary legislation, the appointment of presidential electors when undertaken directly by a state legislature is not subject to a gubernatorial veto.
Foley notes how public-facing politics — outside the cloistered legal arena — could then come into play.
“It might be too much of a power grab. One would hope that American politics have not become so tribal that a political party is willing to seize power without a plausible basis for doing so rooted in the actual votes of the citizenry,” he writes. “If during the canvass itself, Trump can gain traction with his allegation that the blue shift amounts to fraudulently fabricated ballots — along the lines of his 2018 tweet about Florida — then it becomes more politically tenable to claim that the legislature must step in and appoint the state’s electors directly to reflect the ‘true’ will of the state’s voters.”
Normalizing The Idea Of A Second Trump TermTo be sure, pulling this off would be complicated.
Republicans would have to get not one but many of the five Biden states with GOP legislatures to try to ignore the popular vote.
Congress would also have a role to play deciding which electors to recognize, which gives the House Democratic majority some leverage.
And it’s not clear that any of the maneuvers would hold up in court (though let’s remember: the Supreme Court now includes three Republican-appointed justices who worked directly on the Bush v. Gore case that stole the 2000 election for the GOP).
But this is quite obviously what the GOP is aiming for — and they’ve basically said it out loud. Indeed, Trump’s son has promoted the idea of legislatures overturning the election, and so has Trump’s staunch ally, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, a Republican lawmaker involved in Wisconsin’s new election fraud investigation suggested his state’s popular vote could be ignored.
This is why we’ve seen Republican officials and policies continue pretending that Trump didn’t lose the election, and presuming that there will be a second Trump term. This isn’t merely infantile behavior or an immature temper tantrum — it is part of a cutthroat plan.
They are trying to normalize the idea that regardless of how Americans actually voted, a second Trump term is inevitable because state legislatures and Congress will ultimately hand him the Electoral College.
Where Is Democrats’ Call To Action?
One big takeaway here should be that in the long-term, the Electoral College has to go — it has now become an even bigger threat to democracy, beyond just routinely throwing elections to the losers of the national popular vote. The system is being weaponized by a Republican Party determined to thwart the will of voters.In this particular crisis unfolding right now in the short term, a strong and serious response is needed.
We do not need silly, self-aggrandizing, money-wasting vanity stunts from grifter groups like the Lincoln Project, who are preparing a campaign to try to make Trump attorneys at Big Law firms feel bad about themselves — as if a vicious pol like Trump can somehow be deprived of ruthless legal representation.
We need a vociferous public campaign focused on preventing state legislators from feeling empowered to ignore their own voters. And such a campaign could be successful because at least some of these states’ legislatures are only narrowly controlled by the GOP — meaning they may be sensitive to a future voter backlash in 2022 that could come from their actions to steal a presidential election.
And yet… instead of sounding the alarm, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris seem to have settled on a “nothing to see here” approach.
The Biden-Harris campaign has been proceeding as if everything is fine, rolling out some transition team names and announcing that Biden has talked to some world leaders. Biden’s comments today about the election were even more sedated and anodyne than Al Gore back during the 2000 Florida recount. The most he could muster was an assertion that the GOP’s behavior is embarrassing and might hurt Trump’s legacy — as if this is a West Wing episode inanely presuming that any single Republican elected official in the country cares about such things.
November 11, 2020 at 12:05 pm #124192ZooeyModerator— The West Wing gifs (@twwgifs) November 11, 2020
November 11, 2020 at 1:47 pm #124196
waterfieldParticipanti’ll be honest. some of you guys got me a little shook. i mean this couldn’t possibly happen could it? could trump turn this country into a dictatorship? that would have to be the mother of all hail marys.
This might help calm our nerves. It did for me -for at least 5 min. She is a prof. of history at Boston U. and specializes in historian views of politics with a psych. background. No hype -just all facts. Professor Heather Cox Richardson
https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/379595136792840/
November 11, 2020 at 2:51 pm #124195waterfieldParticipantWell my Twitter feed is ablaze with fear of a Trump coup after Pompeo’s remark.
Here is David Sirota:
https://www.dailyposter.com/p/trump-is-staging-a-coup-why-are-dems
Trump Is Staging A Coup — Why Are Dems Not Sounding The Alarm?
Republicans are following a clear plan to try to overturn the election results, just like they did in 2000. And once again, Democrats are not sounding a loud enough alarm.David Sirota
The recent HBO film 537 Votes about the Florida 2000 election mess offers one overarching message: Democrats’ refusal to sound a clear alarm about the slow-motion heist in process ultimately let the election be stolen.
In that debacle, Democrats seemed to think things would break their way with well-honed arguments inside the cloistered confines of the legal system — they never understood how public-facing politics can play a role in what ultimately ended up being a pivotal political brawl outside the courtroom.
Twenty years later, the lesson of that debacle isn’t being heeded. Donald Trump and his cronies are quite clearly waging a public-facing campaign designed to create the conditions for the Electoral College process to pull off a coup.
This is a full-scale emergency — and yet the Democratic strategy seems to be to try to pretend it isn’t happening, in hopes that norms win out, even though nothing at all is normal.
Trump Has A Deliberate Strategy
In the week since the election, Trump’s and his Republican allies have waged a public campaign to call the election results into question — not just in the courtroom, but in the public’s mind. Their lawsuits and Attorney General William Barr’s recent memo are designed as much to win rulings and initiate prosecutions as they are to generate headlines. Their tweets asserting fraud, and their high-profile promises of financial reward for evidence of fraud are all designed to do the same thing.Most ominously of all, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona are already insinuating the results may be fraudulent, even though they haven’t produced any evidence of widespread fraud.
Why is public perception so important? Because as Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley shows in a frighteningly prescient 2019 article, legislatures could use the public perception of fraud to try to invoke their constitutional power to ignore their states’ popular votes, reject certified election results and appoint slates of Trump electors.
In an article that predicted almost exactly what has already happened in Pennsylvania, Foley imagined Trump seeming to be ahead at first, then losing his lead as votes are counted, then making allegations of fraud, setting the stage for this:
At Trump’s urging, the state’s legislature — where Republicans have majorities in both houses — purports to exercise its authority under Article II of the Constitution to appoint the state’s presidential electors directly. Taking their cue from Trump, both legislative chambers claim that the certified popular vote cannot be trusted because of the blue shift that occurred in overtime. Therefore, the two chambers claim to have the constitutional right to supersede the popular vote and assert direct authority to appoint the state’s presidential electors, so that this appointment is in line with the popular vote tally as it existed on Election Night, which Trump continues to claim is the “true” outcome.
The state’s Democratic governor refuses to assent to this assertion of authority by the state’s legislature, but the legislature’s two chambers proclaim that the governor’s assent is unnecessary. They cite early historical practices in which state legislatures appointed presidential electors without any involvement of the state’s governor. They argue that like constitutional amendments, and unlike ordinary legislation, the appointment of presidential electors when undertaken directly by a state legislature is not subject to a gubernatorial veto.
Foley notes how public-facing politics — outside the cloistered legal arena — could then come into play.
“It might be too much of a power grab. One would hope that American politics have not become so tribal that a political party is willing to seize power without a plausible basis for doing so rooted in the actual votes of the citizenry,” he writes. “If during the canvass itself, Trump can gain traction with his allegation that the blue shift amounts to fraudulently fabricated ballots — along the lines of his 2018 tweet about Florida — then it becomes more politically tenable to claim that the legislature must step in and appoint the state’s electors directly to reflect the ‘true’ will of the state’s voters.”
Normalizing The Idea Of A Second Trump TermTo be sure, pulling this off would be complicated.
Republicans would have to get not one but many of the five Biden states with GOP legislatures to try to ignore the popular vote.
Congress would also have a role to play deciding which electors to recognize, which gives the House Democratic majority some leverage.
And it’s not clear that any of the maneuvers would hold up in court (though let’s remember: the Supreme Court now includes three Republican-appointed justices who worked directly on the Bush v. Gore case that stole the 2000 election for the GOP).
But this is quite obviously what the GOP is aiming for — and they’ve basically said it out loud. Indeed, Trump’s son has promoted the idea of legislatures overturning the election, and so has Trump’s staunch ally, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, a Republican lawmaker involved in Wisconsin’s new election fraud investigation suggested his state’s popular vote could be ignored.
This is why we’ve seen Republican officials and policies continue pretending that Trump didn’t lose the election, and presuming that there will be a second Trump term. This isn’t merely infantile behavior or an immature temper tantrum — it is part of a cutthroat plan.
They are trying to normalize the idea that regardless of how Americans actually voted, a second Trump term is inevitable because state legislatures and Congress will ultimately hand him the Electoral College.
Where Is Democrats’ Call To Action?
One big takeaway here should be that in the long-term, the Electoral College has to go — it has now become an even bigger threat to democracy, beyond just routinely throwing elections to the losers of the national popular vote. The system is being weaponized by a Republican Party determined to thwart the will of voters.In this particular crisis unfolding right now in the short term, a strong and serious response is needed.
We do not need silly, self-aggrandizing, money-wasting vanity stunts from grifter groups like the Lincoln Project, who are preparing a campaign to try to make Trump attorneys at Big Law firms feel bad about themselves — as if a vicious pol like Trump can somehow be deprived of ruthless legal representation.
We need a vociferous public campaign focused on preventing state legislators from feeling empowered to ignore their own voters. And such a campaign could be successful because at least some of these states’ legislatures are only narrowly controlled by the GOP — meaning they may be sensitive to a future voter backlash in 2022 that could come from their actions to steal a presidential election.
And yet… instead of sounding the alarm, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris seem to have settled on a “nothing to see here” approach.
The Biden-Harris campaign has been proceeding as if everything is fine, rolling out some transition team names and announcing that Biden has talked to some world leaders. Biden’s comments today about the election were even more sedated and anodyne than Al Gore back during the 2000 Florida recount. The most he could muster was an assertion that the GOP’s behavior is embarrassing and might hurt Trump’s legacy — as if this is a West Wing episode inanely presuming that any single Republican elected official in the country cares about such things.
Zooey: this might help calm your nerves-it did for me-for at least a few minutes. She is a Boston U prof, historian, and general political/psychology background. All facts-no hype.
https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/379595136792840/
November 11, 2020 at 3:47 pm #124198
wvParticipantWell, what exactly are Democrats supposed to do? Trump is taking cases to court. Courts will decide them.
w
vNovember 11, 2020 at 4:28 pm #124201waterfieldParticipantWell, what exactly are Democrats supposed to do? Trump is taking cases to court. Courts will decide them.
w
vI suspect election boards in the contested states are filing briefs in opposition and likely supported by Democrats filing amicus curiae (not a party but friends of the court) briefs-wouldn’t you think ?
November 11, 2020 at 4:31 pm #124202ZooeyModeratorWell, what exactly are Democrats supposed to do? Trump is taking cases to court. Courts will decide them.
w
vSirota is arguing that the Democrats should be out there controlling Spin as well. He’s right. They do a very poor job of framing issues. They should be out there using language like “Coup, unAmerican, Democracy” Whatever. Call them out for what they are doing.
November 11, 2020 at 5:35 pm #124204
Billy_TParticipantWell, what exactly are Democrats supposed to do? Trump is taking cases to court. Courts will decide them.
w
vSirota is arguing that the Democrats should be out there controlling Spin as well. He’s right. They do a very poor job of framing issues. They should be out there using language like “Coup, unAmerican, Democracy” Whatever. Call them out for what they are doing.
I think they need to do more than just counter the narrative, but that is essential. I think they need to bring counter-suits, alleging voter suppression by the GOP. They can easily show evidence of Trump and GOP efforts to jam up voting via the Postal Service, purging voter rolls, reducing polling places in areas dominated by Dem voters, etc.
They can’t count on the courts to rule in their favor. The system is far too political and partisan for that.
Trump and the GOP have shown that reality can be overturned by unified, relentless, unwavering lies. He would have been booted from office already if that hadn’t been surprisingly successful. They created an alternative reality, which means we have a duel.
If one side doesn’t even show up, the lies and the alternative reality win.
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This reply was modified 4 years ago by
Billy_T.
November 11, 2020 at 5:45 pm #124208
JackPMillerParticipantFor the sources of the numbers I've quoted I got the data directly from the Registration Statistics & Election results published on the Commonwealth of Kentucky State Board of Elections site. https://t.co/1lE68aIkmg
I hope the Media & @AmyMcGrathKY will look into all of this.
— Alison Greene (@GrassrootsSpeak) November 11, 2020
November 12, 2020 at 11:16 pm #124247waterfieldParticipantWell, what exactly are Democrats supposed to do? Trump is taking cases to court. Courts will decide them.
w
vSirota is arguing that the Democrats should be out there controlling Spin as well. He’s right. They do a very poor job of framing issues. They should be out there using language like “Coup, unAmerican, Democracy” Whatever. Call them out for what they are doing.
I think they need to do more than just counter the narrative, but that is essential. I think they need to bring counter-suits, alleging voter suppression by the GOP. They can easily show evidence of Trump and GOP efforts to jam up voting via the Postal Service, purging voter rolls, reducing polling places in areas dominated by Dem voters, etc.
They can’t count on the courts to rule in their favor. The system is far too political and partisan for that.
Trump and the GOP have shown that reality can be overturned by unified, relentless, unwavering lies. He would have been booted from office already if that hadn’t been surprisingly successful. They created an alternative reality, which means we have a duel.
If one side doesn’t even show up, the lies and the alternative reality win.
“They can’t count on the courts to rule in their favor. The system is far too political and partisan for that.”
The Democrats are winning in court. Meaning they are in court opposing what the Republicans are doing. On another court issue re the ACA-Kavanaugh is agreeing with Roberts that if one part of the Act is unconstitutional (i.e. tax on those who don’t sign up) that doesn’t mean the entire Act is unconstitutional. Hopefully, this is a sign that the US Supreme Court is now quite as politicized as feared. If the Courts did everything the Republicans wanted we would be back in 1933 Germany. (i.e. Judgment at Nuremberg)
November 13, 2020 at 11:05 am #124257
znModeratorGeneral Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — speaking directly to Donald Trump.
Shots fired…pic.twitter.com/SrNHrmcIOR
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) November 13, 2020
November 13, 2020 at 12:51 pm #124252Billy_TParticipantWell, what exactly are Democrats supposed to do? Trump is taking cases to court. Courts will decide them.
w
vSirota is arguing that the Democrats should be out there controlling Spin as well. He’s right. They do a very poor job of framing issues. They should be out there using language like “Coup, unAmerican, Democracy” Whatever. Call them out for what they are doing.
I think they need to do more than just counter the narrative, but that is essential. I think they need to bring counter-suits, alleging voter suppression by the GOP. They can easily show evidence of Trump and GOP efforts to jam up voting via the Postal Service, purging voter rolls, reducing polling places in areas dominated by Dem voters, etc.
They can’t count on the courts to rule in their favor. The system is far too political and partisan for that.
Trump and the GOP have shown that reality can be overturned by unified, relentless, unwavering lies. He would have been booted from office already if that hadn’t been surprisingly successful. They created an alternative reality, which means we have a duel.
If one side doesn’t even show up, the lies and the alternative reality win.
“They can’t count on the courts to rule in their favor. The system is far too political and partisan for that.”
The Democrats are winning in court. Meaning they are in court opposing what the Republicans are doing. On another court issue re the ACA-Kavanaugh is agreeing with Roberts that if one part of the Act is unconstitutional (i.e. tax on those who don’t sign up) that doesn’t mean the entire Act is unconstitutional. Hopefully, this is a sign that the US Supreme Court is now quite as politicized as feared. If the Courts did everything the Republicans wanted we would be back in 1933 Germany. (i.e. Judgment at Nuremberg)
It only takes one judge to break the GOP way, per state lawsuit. It only takes a couple of GOP controlled states that decide to replace electors with their own, pro-Trumpers. And it only takes Kavanagh to waffle for the ACA to go down and millions to lose their insurance.
I’m suggesting that the Dems play offense in court too. Not just defense against the fascist scheming of the GOP. Play offense. Unlike the GOP, the Dems actually have evidence and legal grounds.
November 13, 2020 at 10:56 pm #124287znModeratorKyle Griffin@kylegriffin1
Just in the last 12 hours, the Trump campaign has lost 6 election-related lawsuits in Pennsylvania.November 13, 2020 at 11:14 pm #124291JackPMillerParticipant
November 13, 2020 at 11:16 pm #124292JackPMillerParticipant
November 14, 2020 at 3:31 am #124308znModeratorthe many obstacles to the “GOP state legislatures steal the election for Trump” scenario
It’s easier said than done.https://www.vox.com/21562815/biden-trump-fraud-state-legislatures-electors
With President Donald Trump and a good portion of the Republican Party unwilling to accept that Joe Biden has won the election, an idea has been tossed around on the right: What if they get Republican state legislatures in states Biden won to appoint Trump electors instead?
To be clear, this would amount to an attempt to steal the election, defying the will of voters and ignoring the election results. But some Republicans are talking about it anyway (claiming the results can’t be trusted because of some fraud for which there is no evidence).
Conservative radio host Mark Levin called for legislatures to act, tweeting: “GET READY TO DO YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY.” The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. retweeted Levin’s tweet. And the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman reported that President Trump himself discussed the possibility at a meeting with advisers Wednesday.
Fox News reporter John Roberts mused on air Wednesday that “the anger out there in these red states is so deep and so palpable that GOP legislators may have a difficult team seating Biden electors.” (“That would be something,” his colleague Bill Hemmer said in response.)
So far, not many Republican legislators in the relevant states have outright endorsed this plan, and the New York Times’ Trip Gabriel and Stephanie Saul reported Friday that several Republican legislative leaders in key states have said they don’t believe they can do so. But there are a few pushing for it. “Our state legislature must be prepared to use all constitutional authority to right the wrong,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R) wrote on Facebook.
Yet even if many more Republican legislators did begin to rally around this plan, there are a great many obstacles — practical, political, and legal — that make it quite unlikely to succeed.
It would take several states to pull this off, and several key states have Democratic statewide officials
To understand what’s going on here, you have to realize that the Electoral College will be made up of actual people — 538 people in total who will cast the votes that officially choose the next president of the United States. The way it’s supposed to work is that, if Biden wins a state, his chosen people become the electors for that state. But this idea from Trump supporters is essentially that GOP state legislatures in states Biden won should just pick Trump electors instead.
Now, to start off with the electoral math: Biden leads in states that would give him 306 electoral votes. Of the states he won somewhat narrowly, five — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia, have Republican-controlled state legislatures.
But successful shenanigans to flip one or even two of these five states to Trump would not be enough to change the outcome. To deprive Biden of 270 electoral votes, Trump would need to overturn the results in three of these five states. That already makes it less plausible that it would work.
The next major problem is that all of these states except Georgia have Democratic statewide officials who obviously would not be willing to go along with a plot to steal their state’s electoral votes for Trump.
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have Democratic governors and secretaries of state.
Election results in Michigan and Wisconsin are certified by bipartisan boards.
Arizona has a Democratic secretary of state (but a Republican governor)
Even in Georgia, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger has so far resisted pressure on the right and said he’s found no significant fraud with the results.
So before even getting into the legal nitty-gritty, it’s clear that there would be significant resistance among statewide officials to any legislative plan to award electors in states Biden won to Trump.Current law does not favor the legislators
Then there is the problem that it’s very far from clear whether state legislatures can legally even do this, especially after the election has concluded, and especially if they don’t use the ordinary legislative process requiring a governor’s signature. Indeed, some have asserted that it would be flat-out illegal for state legislatures to appoint Trump electors in states Biden won at this point.
The legal situation here is complex, with the the US Constitution, federal law, and laws in the individual states all coming into play.
For instance, the Electoral Count Act, as amended in 1948, says that the duty of actually certifying the electors in each state falls to state governors (not the legislature). So the Democratic governors in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania surely wouldn’t meekly accept GOP state legislatures’ plot to swap in their own electors. The governors would certify Biden electors, meaning there would conceivably be two sets of electors in each state.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania state law quite clearly says that electors are chosen in a popular vote in the state’s general election, as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent writes. Wisconsin and Michigan state law also give no role to the legislature in choosing electors. Taking current law at face value, the legislatures really can’t appoint electors.
Against all this, Republicans would try and claim that the power of the Constitution’s literal text should wipe out vast swaths of existing federal and state law. Specifically, they’d say that Article II, Section I says (emphasis added) “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” They’d ask, doesn’t that mean the legislature really gets to do whatever it wants with electors? Not the governor or (in Wisconsin and Michigan’s case) bipartisan elections boards?
This assertion of power would be particularly mind-boggling because, in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan (at least) it would have to be done outside the ordinary state lawmaking process, to avoid a veto from the Democratic governor. Essentially, GOP legislators would have to claim that they can wipe out state laws purely through their own authority.
This would fly in the face of long-existing Supreme Court precedent — in the 1932 Smiley v. Holm decision, the Court held that, no, the Constitution doesn’t let a legislature just ignore the governor’s veto on election matters.
Of course, there’s a different Supreme Court now. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh recently embraced the legal theory that, in Gorsuch’s words, “state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.”
But it’s unclear if three other justices on the Court are with them. And boy, would it be a lot for the Court to throw out state and federal laws and Supreme Court precedent left and right to anoint Trump the winner of an election Biden clearly won. (Another problem, as Ohio State University law professor Edward B. Foley wrote in a law journal article last year, is that it could violate the due process clause of the Constitution to change election rules after the election has already happened.)
Another wrinkle, though, is that it’s not even necessarily clear that the Supreme Court would be the decider here. The Constitution gives the role of counting the electoral votes to Congress — which in this case would mean the new Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate (because the Georgia runoffs wouldn’t yet be decided). It’s unclear how a serious dispute would be settled (Foley’s article has some ideas), but it’s worth noting that several Republican senators have already congratulated Biden or have recognized that he appears to have won.
The backlash would be … quite something
Finally, there’s another consideration: if Republican legislators actually tried to steal the election in this way, many people would get very, very upset, and the situation could get very, very ugly.
In a piece disparaging what he called this “completely insane electoral college strategy,” National Review editor Rich Lowry used the word “thermonuclear” to describe the backlash that would ensue, and called it “a poisonous idea that stands out as radical and destructive, even in a year when we’ve been debating court-packing and defunding the police.”
Where that “thermonuclear” rage would lead, we can only guess. But anyone concerned with the basic stability of the nation would have reason to think twice about going down this road.
If enough GOP legislators are sufficiently ideologically radical and beholden to Trump, they could choose to give it a try anyway. But there are many obstacles in the way of this gambit’s success.
November 14, 2020 at 11:48 am #124315znModeratorTrump campaign ends voter fraud hotline after it's filled with prank calls https://t.co/yB5CImdNP1 pic.twitter.com/iFu5XeaPQ4
— The Hill (@thehill) November 14, 2020
November 19, 2020 at 7:03 pm #124583znModeratorThe Republican National Committee, right-wing media personalities, and Trump's propaganda/"legal" team, all calling for an election to be overturned to maintain their hold on power. I never thought I'd see such unpatriotic acts by either party in America. https://t.co/kvDdwHSgPq
— Evan McMullin 🇺🇸 (@EvanMcMullin) November 19, 2020
November 20, 2020 at 2:21 pm #124602waterfieldParticipant1933 Germany
November 20, 2020 at 3:01 pm #124603znModerator1933 Germany
Except in 33 the bad guys actually won the election. They didn’t try to steal it through bogus ideas about voter fraud.
November 20, 2020 at 4:11 pm #124606waterfieldParticipant1933 Germany
Except in 33 the bad guys actually won the election. They didn’t try to steal it through bogus ideas about voter fraud.
That’s my point. Over 70 million people and 90% of those who identify as being republicans actually believe he won the election. Scary times here.
November 20, 2020 at 8:07 pm #124616znModerator1933 Germany
Except in 33 the bad guys actually won the election. They didn’t try to steal it through bogus ideas about voter fraud.
That’s my point. Over 70 million people and 90% of those who identify as being republicans actually believe he won the election. Scary times here.
True. On the other hand–they didn’t win. And, they can’t force a win that isn’t there. Even if they managed to make an effort, I think the uprising over that would be a sight to behold.
November 21, 2020 at 8:16 pm #124654znModeratorThe Court wasn't having it.
"Strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations unsupported by evidence."
Ouch. https://t.co/5EV4jD6no2— Andrew Brandt (@AndrewBrandt) November 22, 2020
November 22, 2020 at 2:48 am #124663znModeratorU.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann turned down the request for an injunction, dealing another blow to Trump’s hopes of invalidating the election’s results.
In his 37-page ruling, Brann said the Trump campaign asked him to “disenfranchise almost seven million voters” and said he could not find any case in which a plaintiff “has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election.”
With such a request, the judge said, one might expect compelling legal argument “and factual proof of rampant corruption.” Instead, Brann added, “this court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.”
“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” Brann wrote in his opinion.
The lawsuit claimed that some counties allowed mail-in voters to cure problems with the ballots by casting a provisional ballots, but some counties did not, which violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.
But even if that were the basis for seeking some kind of order, Brann said, the remedy sought by the Trump campaign goes too far.
“Rather than requesting that their votes be counted, they seek to discredit scores of other votes, but only for one race,” the judge wrote. “This is simply not how the Constitution works.”
The Trump campaign said in a statement that it would be “seeking an expedited appeal to the Third Circuit.”
“We are disappointed we did not at least get the opportunity to present our evidence at a hearing,” the campaign said.
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who announced earlier this year that he will not run for reelection in 2022, said the ruling by a “longtime conservative Republican” judge, plus other recent legal setbacks for the Trump campaign, marked the beginning of a new administration.
“President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania,” Toomey said in a statement. “To ensure that he is remembered for these outstanding accomplishments, President Trump should accept the outcome of the election and facilitate the presidential transition process.”
Since Election Day, the Trump campaign has sued the boards of elections in Philadelphia, Allegheny, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Northampton and Centre counties. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the lawsuit in Philadelphia on Tuesday, ruling that officials did not violate state law by maintaining at least 15 feet of separation between observers and the workers counting ballots.
“The court saw through the attempts by President Trump and his enablers in Washington and Harrisburg to interfere with democracy,” said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, in an emailed statement. “The people of Pennsylvania have had their say, and it is time to put this election behind us.”
Terrie Griffin, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, said Saturday’s ruling shows that it’s “time to move past the desperate accusations, stop the perpetuation of false claims, and accept the choices of Pennsylvania voters.”
“Pennsylvania voters have spoken in greater numbers than ever before, and today’s decision confirms the sanctity of the vote,” she said in a statement.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, tweeted shortly after Brann’s ruling, saying “Another one bites the dust.”
November 25, 2020 at 12:35 pm #124842znModeratorPatrick Sullivan from Facebook
Biden has won in Michigan so many times he’s now required to call himself Ohio State.
November 25, 2020 at 1:47 pm #124844wvParticipantTrump is gone. He gets to play the Martyr to his core ‘believers’ for the rest of his life. He’ll be Trump-Jesus. Only, ya know, Bigger and Better than Jesus.
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vNovember 30, 2020 at 12:15 am #125062znModerator“We can go on and on with all the farcical claims alleging interference in the 2020 election, but the proof is in the ballots. The recounts are consistent with the initial count,” says Krebs. “The American people should have 100% confidence in their vote.” https://t.co/SBqu3FlK6S pic.twitter.com/5ZMHcnLGYa
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 30, 2020
November 30, 2020 at 2:26 am #125071znModeratorDecember 5, 2020 at 4:38 pm #125254znModeratorJared Yates Sexton@JYSexton
The President of the United States called a governor and asked him to overturn the results of a free and fair election to try and maintain power.People. It’s a coup. Period. It may not work, but it doesn’t change the fact or that an entire party is just fine with this madness.
December 6, 2020 at 10:54 am #125267znModeratorThis might be the best story yet when it comes to the comedy of the voter fraud claims:https://t.co/IpHkUjzJum
— Jason Cole (@JasonCole62) December 6, 2020
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