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Zorro

(15,690 posts)
Wed Dec 30, 2020, 10:50 PM Dec 2020

Trump's Embarrassing Electoral College Hustle

It is doomed to fail but would still set a destructive precedent.

By The Editorial Board

President Trump’s last and worst shot at overturning the 2020 election will come on Jan. 6, as the new Congress meets in joint session to tally the votes from the Electoral College. Mr. Trump wants Republican lawmakers to lodge formal objections to Joe Biden’s electors, and this kamikaze mission already has a few volunteers.

Here’s what would happen next, at least according to the Electoral Count Act: If a state’s electors are challenged by both a Senator and a Representative, then each chamber is supposed to retire to consider it. If they rejected the electors of enough states to deny Mr. Biden 270 electoral votes, then the House would choose the President.

But how could lawmakers justify throwing out electors for Mr. Biden? Although Mr. Trump keeps tweeting claims of massive vote fraud, his lawsuits have been rejected in court, sometimes by his own conservative appointees.

Any challenge to Mr. Biden’s electors appears doomed, since upholding the objection takes a majority in both chambers. The Democratic House would use the opportunity to excoriate Mr. Trump a final time on his way out the door, and grown-ups in the Republican Senate are unlikely to play along. Hence the Trump crowd’s latest argument: that the power to invalidate electors rests with the joint session’s presiding officer—Vice President Mike Pence.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-embarrassing-electoral-college-hustle-11609371708

When Trump and the Republicans lose even The Wall Street Journal...

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Trump's Embarrassing Electoral College Hustle (Original Post) Zorro Dec 2020 OP
Riddle me this: If an R runs for POTUS in 2024 and wins the EC but the D's hold both... Girard442 Dec 2020 #1
Precisely... and why this concept is utterly bird-brained...apologies to birds! Karadeniz Dec 2020 #2

Girard442

(6,048 posts)
1. Riddle me this: If an R runs for POTUS in 2024 and wins the EC but the D's hold both...
Wed Dec 30, 2020, 11:03 PM
Dec 2020

the House and the Senate, couldn't they just reject enough slates of electors to put the D candidate in the White House? I mean, there's no appeal, so they could, technically, dump a state's EC votes on the grounds the governor wore the wrong color socks.

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