"
11 more GOP senators join call to object to election result
OPINION
Trump challenge to Biden win exposes massive democracy flaw. Next time it just might work.
Trump’s effort to interfere with the Electoral College count will fail — this time. But it’s dangerous because it provides a blueprint for next time.
CHRIS TRUAX | OPINION COLUMNIST | 39 minutes ago
You’ve got to give credit where credit is due. President Donald Trump is sparking the biggest reexamination of the nuts and bolts of our democracy since the Constitutional Convention in 1787. How many of us had contemplated the ins and outs of the Vacancies Act or the proper scope of presidential power during a national emergency before Trump came along? Unfortunately, all this is missing some of the dignity of the original discussion, and we’ve ended up with a sort of tabloid version of The Federalist Papers in which those of us concerned about American institutions don’t so much engage in learned debate as in frantically attempting to head off the next pending scandal.
Which brings us to the Electoral Count Act of 1887. Until a few weeks ago, this was one of the most obscure pieces of legislation on the books. The ECA governs how Electoral College votes are counted. In short, during a joint session of Congress, the vice president opens the envelopes containing each state’s Electoral College votes and hands them to two tellers from the House and two tellers from the Senate who read the votes aloud. Once all the votes have been read, the tellers add them up and announce the result. In 2013, the entire process took 23 minutes.
Republic hinges on the honor system
There is a little more to it than that. The ECA also includes procedures for challenging Electoral College votes. A challenge requires the support of at least one senator and at least one House member. The House and Senate then convene separately to debate and vote on the challenge. In order to be successful, the challenge must be upheld by both chambers.
Unfortunately, the statute is not always a model of clarity. It contains multiple sentences more than 200 words long and it isn’t clear how some scenarios would be handled. Fortunately, none of these scenarios has ever come up.
In the 133 years since the ECA was adopted, electoral votes have been challenged exactly twice: Once in 1969, which involved a challenge to an elector who was supposed to vote for Richard Nixon but voted for George Wallace instead, and once in 2005, when Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, joined to challenge Ohio’s presidential electors. In both cases, these challenges were rejected by both the House and the Senate. In the case of the 2005 challenge, which is the closest we’ve come to the situation we’re facing Wednesday, the challenge was rejected 267-31 in the House and 74-1 in the Senate.
Sens. Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson, who plan to contest Joe Biden’s win, in Washington in 2017.
SUSAN WALSH/AP
Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election are far more serious. Based on their public statements, at least a dozen senators and at least 140 House members will vote to reject Electoral College votes from various swing states. That shouldn’t happen, and if these congressional Republicans followed the terms of the ECA, it wouldn’t happen. All the election results have been certified, all the legal challenges resolved and all the Electoral College votes cast, certified by the governors and sent to the Archivist of the United States — just as the statute requires.
And none of that matters. If members of Congress vote to reject valid presidential electors for invalid reasons, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. While we’ve never fully appreciated it until now, the ugly truth is that, despite a nationwide vote fenced with elaborate legal and technical safeguards, the president of the United States is actually elected on the honor system by 535 members of Congress.
GOP Sen. Rob Portman: No proof of mass fraud that would change election result
Despite the unprecedented number of Republicans willing to uphold a challenge, the House is controlled by Democrats; in the Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, is trying to discourage the move. At least four Senate Republicans have pledged to uphold the election result: Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.
Blueprint for an overthrow
So Trump’s effort to interfere with the Electoral College count is going to fail — this time. Nonetheless, this tawdry episode is dangerous because it provides a blueprint for the next time. And there will be a next time because it’s now clear that under the system of counting Electoral College votes, a party that controls both chambers of Congress can install its candidate as president regardless of the election results if its members have the political will to do so.
Denialism 2020: Trump and his fanatical allies are electoral terrorists. It’s got to stop.
Too many of the guardrails of democracy are little more than white lines painted on the road that depend on a sense of honor, duty and integrity that is simply no longer the norm. Republican senators and representatives who vote to uphold a challenge Wednesday will be putting their fear of Trump and his supporters ahead of their duty to the country. That’s shameful and unworthy, but that’s the political world in which we now find ourselves.
Our system of checks and balances is inadequate for the challenges we face, and it isn’t just the Electoral Count Act that needs updating and strengthening. The Guardrails of Democracy Project has identified dozens of cracks and holes in our constitutional infrastructure that require urgent repair. Don’t let Trump’s buffoonery lull you into a false sense of security. The next time some authoritarian wannabe takes a run at the Constitution, he’ll be playing for keeps.
Republican Chris Truax, an appellate lawyer in San Diego, is a legal adviser for The Guardrails
© Copyright Gannett 2021
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
Pence!?!
"
The New York Times
Pence Welcomes Futile Bid by G.O.P. Lawmakers to Overturn Election
Vice President Mike Pence signaled his support as 11 Republican senators and senators-elect said that they would vote to reject President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Share on FacebookPost on TwitterMail
Image
The group, led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, brings to nearly one-quarter the proportion of Senate Republicans who have broken with their leaders to join the effort to invalidate the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The group, led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, brings to nearly one-quarter the proportion of Senate Republicans who have broken with their leaders to join the effort to invalidate the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
By Luke Broadwater
Jan. 2, 2021
WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence signaled support on Saturday for a futile Republican bid to overturn the election in Congress next week, after 11 Republican senators and senators-elect said that they would vote to reject President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory when the House and Senate meet to formally certify it.
The announcement by the senators — and Mr. Pence’s move to endorse it — reflected a groundswell among Republicans to defy the unambiguous results of the election and indulge President Trump’s attempts to remain in power with false claims of voting fraud.
Every state in the country has certified the election results after verifying their accuracy, many following postelection audits or hand counts. Judges across the country, and a Supreme Court with a conservative majority, have rejected nearly 60 attempts by Mr. Trump and his allies to challenge the results.
And neither Mr. Pence nor any of the senators who said they would vote to invalidate the election has made a specific allegation of fraud, instead offering vague suggestions that some wrongdoing might have occurred and asserting that many of their supporters believe that it has.
ADVERTISEMENT
The senators’ opposition to certifying Mr. Biden’s election will not change the outcome. But it guarantees that what would normally be a perfunctory session on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ratify the results of the presidential election will instead become a partisan brawl, in which Republicans amplify specious claims of widespread election rigging that have been debunked and dismissed for weeks even as Mr. Trump has stoked them.
The spectacle promises to set a caustic backdrop for Mr. Biden’s inauguration in the coming weeks and reflects the polarized politics on Capitol Hill that will be among his greatest challenges.
It will also pose a political dilemma for Republicans, forcing them to choose between accepting the results of a democratic election — even if it means angering supporters who dislike the outcome and could punish them at the polls — and joining their colleagues in displaying unflinching loyalty to Mr. Trump, who has demanded in increasingly angry fashion that they back his bid to cling to the presidency.
The conundrum is especially acute for Mr. Pence, who as president of the Senate has the task of presiding over Wednesday’s proceedings and declaring Mr. Biden the winner, but has his own future political aspirations to consider as well. On Friday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by House Republicans to pressure Mr. Pence to do otherwise, and instead unilaterally overturn the results.
But on Saturday evening, Marc Short, his chief of staff, issued a statement saying that Mr. Pence “shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election.”
The vice president, the statement continued, “welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th.”
TRACKING VIRAL MISINFORMATIONEvery day, Times reporters chronicle and debunk false and misleading information that is going viral online.
Image
Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, has the task of presiding over Wednesday’s proceedings and declaring Mr. Biden the winner.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
In a joint statement on Saturday, the Senate Republicans — including seven senators and four who are to be sworn in on Sunday — called for a 10-day audit of election returns in “disputed states,” and said they would vote to reject the electors from those states until one was completed. They did not elaborate on which states.
The group is led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and includes Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Mike Braun of Indiana, and Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
Together with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who announced this week that he would object to Congress’s certification of the election results, they bring to nearly one-quarter the proportion of Senate Republicans who have broken with their leaders to join the effort to invalidate Mr. Biden’s victory. In the House, where a band of conservatives has been plotting the last-ditch election objection for weeks, more than half of Republicans joined a failed lawsuit seeking to overturn the will of the voters, and more are expected to support the effort to challenge the results in Congress next week.
Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, has said he will object to certifying the results, and with Mr. Hawley’s support, that challenge would hold weight, prompting senators and representatives to retreat to their chambers on opposite sides of the Capitol for a two-hour debate and then a vote on whether to disqualify a state’s votes. Both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to agree to toss out a state’s electoral votes — something that has not happened since the 19th century and is not expected to this time.
In their statement, the Republicans cited poll results showing most members of their party believe the election was “rigged,” an assertion that Mr. Trump has made for months, and which has been repeated in the right-wing news media and by many Republican members of Congress.
“A fair and credible audit — conducted expeditiously and completed well before Jan. 20 — would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next president,” they wrote. “We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.”
They also acknowledged that their effort was likely to be unsuccessful, given that any such challenge must be sustained by both the House, where Democrats hold the majority, and the Senate, where top Republicans including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, have tried to shut it down.
“We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise,” the senators wrote.
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee with jurisdiction over federal elections, called the Republican effort a “publicity stunt” that would ultimately fail, but said it was dangerous nevertheless, amounting to “an attempt to subvert the will of the voters.” She noted in an interview that hundreds of millions of votes had already been “counted, recounted, litigated and state-certified” across the country.
“These baseless claims have already been examined and dismissed by Trump’s own attorney general, dozens of courts and election officials from both parties,” said Mike Gwin, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign.
While lawmakers have sought to register their opposition to past presidential election results by challenging Congress’s certification, the move has generally been more symbolic than substantive, given that the loser had already conceded and senators rarely joined with members of the House to force a vote. But as Mr. Trump continues to perpetuate the myth of widespread voter fraud, a growing number of Republicans in Congress have been eager to challenge the results, either out of devotion to the president or out of fear of enraging the base of their party that still reveres him even in defeat.
That is the case even though the vast majority of them just won elections in the very same balloting they are now claiming was fraudulently administered.
Mr. McConnell has discouraged senators from joining the House effort, and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, told reporters the challenge to the election results would fail in the Senate “like a shot dog,” prompting a Twitter rebuke from Mr. Trump.
Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, on Thursday condemned the attempt, calling it a “dangerous ploy” intended to “disenfranchise millions of Americans.” He accused fellow Republicans of making a political calculation to try to further their careers at the expense of the truth by tapping into Mr. Trump’s “populist base.”
But Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist and Mr. McConnell’s former chief of staff, warned that those involved in the effort would come to regret their stance.
“Rarely can you predict with 100% assurance that years from now everyone who went down this road will wish they had a mulligan,” Mr. Holmes wrote on Twitter.
Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican who has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2022, also blasted the effort, saying that Mr. Hawley, Mr. Cruz and others were “directly” undermining the “right of the people to elect their own leaders.”
Responding to critics, Mr. Hawley told fellow Republican lawmakers late Saturday that he sought to represent his constituents in raising his objection to the election results.
“Missourians have been loud and clear that they do not believe the presidential election was fair,” he said in a letter obtained by The New York Times.
For years, Mr. Trump has railed against contests in which he lost, disliked the outcome or feared he might be defeated. He objected to the results of the Emmys, falsely claimed President Barack Obama did not win the popular vote, asserted that Mr. Cruz “stole” a primary victory from him in Iowa in 2016 and predicted that the election in which he defeated the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would be “rigged.” In the months leading up to November’s election, he also warned that he would be cheated out of a victory, and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
As Mr. Biden racked up victories in November, Mr. Trump indulged in increasingly outlandish fictions, spreading disinformation about the election’s results and encouraging his followers to challenge the vote at every step. In recent weeks, as his legal defeats have stacked up, the president has become more vitriolic in his condemnations of Republicans who fail to support his false claims of having been the true victor in the election, and has lavished praise on those who parrot his accusations.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump cheered on the Republican senators who announced they would object to certifying the election, writing on Twitter: “Our country will love them for it!”
The vote tally and procedures in every battleground state that Mr. Trump contests have been affirmed through multiple postelection audits. Mr. Biden won the election with over seven million more votes than Mr. Trump and with 306 Electoral College votes, surpassing the threshold of 270 needed to win the presidency.
Nevertheless, more than a month after Mr. Biden’s victory, with increasing numbers in their party marching in lock step with Mr. Trump, some Republicans felt the need on Saturday to explain why they planned to vote to uphold the results of a democratic election.
“I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and that is what I will do Jan. 6,” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in a statement. She is to face voters next year.
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah warned of the consequences of backing a bid to subvert the election’s outcome.
“I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world,” he said in a statement. “Has ambition so eclipsed principle?”
The Election Aftermath
Republicans move to overturn Biden’s win
Federal Judge Dismisses Election Lawsuit Against PenceJan. 1, 2021
Sasse Slams G.O.P. Effort to Challenge Election Results as a ‘Dangerous Ploy’Dec. 31, 2020
‘No Realistic Path’ for Quick Vote on $2,000 Stimulus Checks, McConnell SaysDec. 30, 2020
Can Congress Overturn the Electoral College Results? Probably NotDec. 14, 2020
Trump Allies Eye Long-Shot Election Reversal in Congress, Testing PenceDec. 13, 2020
Luke Broadwater covers Congress. He was the lead reporter on a series of investigative articles at the Baltimore Sun that won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award in 2020. @lukebroadwater
Highlights of Trump’s Call With the Georgia Secretary of State
© 2021 The New York Times Company
}}>}>>>>}>>>}>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Guardian
Trump recorded pressuring Georgia secretary of state to overturn election result – video
Donald Trump
‘I just want 11,780 votes’: Trump pressed Georgia to overturn Biden victory
Trump asked secretary of state to recalculate vote in phone call
Republican push to keep Trump in power seems doomed
Martin Pengelly in New York and Richard Luscombe in Miami
@MartinPengelly
Sun 3 Jan 2021 17.40 EST
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare via Email
In an hour-long phone call on Saturday, Donald Trump pressed Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there in the election the president refuses to concede.
Healthcare to the electoral college: seven ways 2020 left America exposed | Robert Reich
The Washington Post obtained a tape of the “extraordinary” conversation, which Trump acknowledged on Twitter.
Amid widespread outrage including calls for a second impeachment, Bob Bauer, a senior Biden adviser, said: “We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.”
The Post published the full call.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
Raffensperger is a Republican who has become a bête noire among Trump supporters for repeatedly saying Biden’s win in his state was fair. In one of a number of parries, he said: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
He insisted: “There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”
Trump’s contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape
Trump did not win Georgia, which went Democratic for the first time since 1992. Its result has been certified. Attempts to pressure Republicans in other battleground states have failed, as have the vast majority of challenges to results in court.
Despite promised objections from at least 12 senators and a majority of House Republicans, Biden’s electoral college victory will be ratified by Congress on Wednesday and the Democrat will be inaugurated as the 46th president on 20 January. Trump will then leave the White House – where he remained, tweeting angrily, all weekend.
Edward B Foley, an Ohio State law professor, told the Post the call was “‘inappropriate and contemptible’ and should prompt moral outrage”. In an email to the Guardian, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said Trump might be “in legal jeopardy after Biden is inaugurated”.
“For example, if the justice department or US attorneys believe that Trump violated federal law or if local prosecutors in states, such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump may have engaged in similar behaviour with state or local election officials, believe that Trump violated state election laws, the federal or state prosecutors could file suit against Trump.”
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, went further, calling for Trump to be impeached a second time, little more than two weeks before he leaves office.
“The president of the United States has been caught on tape trying to rig a presidential election,” Bookbinder said. “This is a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct. It is incontrovertible and devastating.
‘Integrity still matters’: the unlikely Republican standing up to Trump’s voter fraud lies
“When the Senate acquitted President Trump for abusing his powers to try to get himself re-elected [in February 2020, regarding approaches to Ukraine for dirt on Biden], we worried that he would grow more brazen in his attempts to wrongly and illegally keep himself in power. He has … Congress must act immediately.”
Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee, Jerry Nadler, said in a statement that Trump “remains profoundly unfit for office” and “may have also subjected himself to additional criminal liability”.
In a tweet, Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor at the impeachment trial, said: “Trump’s contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape. Pressuring an election official to ‘find’ the votes so he can win is potentially criminal, and another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not.”
Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat elected House speaker for a fourth term, set out strategy for the election certification in a memo to colleagues.
“Over the years,” she wrote, “we have experienced many challenges in the House, but no situation matches the Trump presidency and the Trump disrespect for the will of the people.”
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, took a shot at Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican leading calls for an “emergency audit” of the election.
“You want to investigate election fraud?” the New Yorker tweeted. “Start with this.”
Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois, tweeted: “This is absolutely appalling. To every member of Congress considering objecting to the election results, you cannot – in light of this – do so with a clean conscience.”
Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock’
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer, were also on the call, during which Trump ran through debunked claims regarding supposed electoral fraud and called Raffensperger a “child”, “either dishonest or incompetent” and a “schmuck”. Characteristically, he also threatened legal action.
“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” Trump said. “You know, that’s a criminal offence. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan [Germany], your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”
Referring to runoffs on Tuesday that will decide control of the Senate, Trump said: “You know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam.
“Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. OK? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”
Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, seeking to beat Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, have ranged themselves behind Trump. But Georgia Republicans fear his attacks could suppress turnout as Democrats work to boost their own.
Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock bumps elbows with Stacey Abrams during a rally with Joe Biden in Atlanta. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Early voting has reached unprecedented levels and on Sunday, former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams told ABC’s This Week: “What we’re so excited about is that we haven’t stopped reaching those voters. Millions of contacts have been made, thousands of new registrations have been held. We know that at least 100,000 people who did not vote in the general election are now voting in this election.”
Trump told Raffensperger: “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’”
New Congress sworn in as Georgia runoffs loom and Trump runs amok
The Democrats seized on the call.
“That is a direct attack on our democracy,” Ossoff said, at a rally in Savannah. “If David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler had one piece of steel in their spines, one shred of integrity, they would be out here defending Georgia voters from this kind of assault.”
In a statement, Warnock said: “Senator Loeffler has a responsibility to speak out against the unsubstantiated claims of fraud, to defend Georgia’s elections, and to put Georgia ahead of herself. She has not and never will.”
Perdue and Loeffler did not immediately comment.
Trump told Raffensperger he knew the call wasn’t “going anywhere”. The state official ended the conversation.
On Twitter, Trump said Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”
Twitter duly applied a disclaimer: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
Raffensperger also responded: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”
© 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.