“Just In: Jack Smith and Biden’s DOJ to Indict Rudy Giuliani and Fellow Trump Attorneys for Questioning Stolen 2020 Election”
Look, this is all very simple.
First: There is no “presidential election” in the US Constitution, not the way people usually use the phrase.
Second: The President (and the VP) are chosen by 538 people appointed by 51 political jurisdictions. The Constitution gives 50 sovereign entities jurisdiction over their own appointments, the States unwisely chose in 1960 to grant Congress a co-equal power to appoint 3 electors.
Third: “Questioning” is a crime in dictatorships. It is not a crime in the United States, in fact, it is protected political speech. It would be a crime to assassinate an Elector, or to impede his travel to his State capital to cast his vote.
Fourth: The attempts to “overturn” the “election” of 2020 were marked by incompetence, Constitutional science fiction, buffoonery, and acts verging on fraud. With regard to the patriotic pageant on November 3, each State Legislature was fully empowered to do anything they wanted about appointing Electors. “Alternate Electors” did not exist, could not exist.
Fifth: Congress was within its OWN rights to conduct the enumeration of Electoral votes however it chose to do so.
Of course, charging Rudy and his pack of incompetents with CRIMES over their actions is the behavior of a despot. But lets call a spade a spade: We are governed by a bipartisan cabal of anti-constitional villains who have no intention of allowing self-rule to the people, in fact, they are horrified at the prospect of it, and there is no turning back as long as they occupy our capital.
Good post, but you are flat-out wrong on this point. The “alternate electors” absolutely serve a legitimate role.
One of the clear mandates in the constitution for the selection of a President is that the Presidential Electors must all convene on the same day in their respective state capitals to cast their votes. For the 2020 election, this day was established as somewhere around December 15th.
At that time in 2016 there were still several legal challenges in place related to the November “popular election.” The purpose of having a set of alternate electors seated was to prepare for the real (through perhaps not likely) possibility that one or more of those challenges would be successful. Without having those “alternate electors” cast their votes on the appointed day in December, the end result of a successful legal challenge in any given state would have been as follows:
1. Trump wins the challenge on the merits of the case.
2. The state’s electoral votes are given to Biden anyway because the Biden electors were the only ones who met and cast their votes on the appointed date one to three weeks earlier.