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Vice President Pence and his Constitutional Role
Illinois Review ^ | February 11, AD 2022 | John F Di Leo

Posted on 02/11/2022 8:36:34 PM PST by jfd1776

Vice President Pence has spoken out on January 6, 2021. He announced that President Trump said that Pence had the power to overturn the election that day, and that he should have done so… But he didn’t do it.

Vice President Pence is winning considerable points with the mass media and the RINOs for saying that President Trump was wrong; Pence, in fact, did not have the power to overturn the election.

In truth, this is a typical example of the Left, and of the Left’s enablers, capitalizing on an example when President Trump was correct in fact, but used the wrong words. President Trump is often clumsy with his wording.

Of course, Vice President Pence did not have the power to overturn an election. In a republic, no one does. Overturning an election is a coup d’état; we would all hope that America will never have need of such measures.

But, however clumsy his wording, that is not what President Trump had expected Pence to do. President Trump rightly expected Pence to use every legal power of his office to ensure that the true will of the people was reflected in the next inauguration. Period.

President Trump is not alone in his confidence that Joe Biden, a dementia patient who hid in his basement the entire campaign, could not possibly have been legitimately elected by the majority of citizens in the United States of America in 2020.

That is not to say that the election couldn’t have been stolen. Almost any election can be stolen, especially if you remove all of the safeguards that normally ensure an honest vote and an honest count.

Consider: What has happened, in recent years?

- Motor Voter laws automatically register people on the voting rolls, enabling them to vote, regardless of citizenship status or felony status, the two most common disqualifiers for a legitimate count in most states (and remember, we have many tens of millions of non-citizens who drive).

- More and more cities, counties, and states either refuse to allow voter roll clean-up to remove the dead, the moved-away, and the fictional from the lists, or, worse, allow same-day registration that does an end run around the very concept of such voting rolls.

- Numerous states took advantage of the COVID-19 "pandemic" to scare people out of voting in person at polling places, and to authorize mass-mailings of ballots to anyone on any list, in many cases, multiple times. Some states even allowed people to use their home printer and make up their own ballots.

- None of these expansions of ballot access were matched with any kind of commensurate controls. For example, the absentee ballot process traditionally required a formal request by the voter, along with photocopies of identification or similar verification methods to ensure that the mail-in ballot was cast by the correct person, in the absence of a human interaction in a polling place. These measures were not used with mail-in ballots; the 2020 mail in election was almost completely uncontrolled and unguarded.

As a result, at least 20 million more ballots were alleged to have been cast in 2022 then statistics would expect… quite possibly, many more than that.

This is just a short listing of a few of the reasons to cast doubt on the 2020 election. There are dozens more types of vote fraud that certainly occurred, the only question is, in what numbers. Were these dozens of methods of fraud sufficient to change the results?

Individually... some were. But taken together... of course they were.

The presidency is chosen in a different manner than any other elected position in America. And this system has changed slightly - only slightly - a few times since the Constitution was written.

We have added the concept of political parties, and made them a part of the process. We abandoned the original idea of the top two vote-getters being elected president and vice president; and decided to have presidents and vice presidents run together as a ticket. We have slightly changed the way that the electors meet, and we have changed the date when the new president is sworn in.

But one thing we have never changed is the fact that the vice president oversees the final delivery of the states’ electors, their acceptance, and their count.

Why? And why does that matter?

Our Constitution is a narrow, tightly focused document. There is nothing extraneous in it. It identifies who has the power to levy taxes, the power to command the military, the power to judge court cases and to appoint diplomats.

It is therefore safe to assume that when one officer or branch has a role to play, that role is an active one, not merely a formality.

The vice president only has a couple of duties besides being ready to step in if a president dies or is impeached. These are not formalities. One of his key duties, for example, is to oversee the senate. Why? Because the Framers expected the vice president to frequently be a tie-breaking vote. The advent of political parties has changed this, so there are far fewer tie-breakers needed than the framers expected, but the power remains, and it is still frequently used.

By the same token, if the vice president was given the duty of supervising the collection of the states 'electors, it can only mean that this is also not a formality, but rather, that he has the power to question those slates, when questions are valid.

Remember, by the time we reached January 6, 2021, it was clear to any observer that there was a huge cloud over the electoral choice of at least seven states. Numerous court cases had arisen, many of which had not been heard, being frequently denied on technicalities or rebuffed by partisan or nervous judges. Multiple state legislatures' committees - including Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia - had already begun holding hearings, identifying huge irregularities, broad enough to cast doubt on the voting results in their respective states.

But there was no structural opportunity for these state legislatures to declare their will throughout that period.

We have been holding elections for 230 years. This was the first time that there were so many allegations of fraud, so much cleare discrepancy between the laws passed by the state legislatures and the administrations of elections by their respective state bureaucracies.

The Left and its lapdogs want the American public to believe that the choice of electors is in the hands of the city and county election boards, the county clerks, and the state and county secretaries of state.

This is completely untrue.

In fact, one element of the Constitution that has never been amended, and therefore stands to this day without alteration, is Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, which declares unequivocally that the selection of electors is to occur in a manner set forth by the state legislatures. Nobody else. Just the state legislatures.

Governors, precinct workers, poll watchers, political parties, news reporters, pop-culture personalities, party hacks and bureaucrats have no role other than what those state legislatures may choose to give them.

And it was clear by January 6 that, in at least several states, the state legislatures should have been given the opportunity to weigh in, and determine for themselves which slates should represent their states.

This was the opportunity for the vice president to act. This should have been Vice President Pence‘s moment.

Not to overturn an election, not to stage a coup... but to prevent an election from being stolen, to prevent a coup from occurring.

All he had to do was to declare what everyone knew: that there was a cloud over certain states' elector slates, and turn the question back to the state legislatures of those states, asking them to either approve or replace the slate of electors that their bureaucrats had sent up for the count.

The Constitution has a provision for what to do if there aren’t enough electors to provide a majority. We might have needed that provision... or, if the states in question acted quickly, we would not have…

But the 2020 election will forever have a cloud on it, not only because of all the vote fraud, but also because a vice president failed to fulfill his constitutional obligation to serve as the one and only final brake on a process that had gone tragically awry.

Normally, in a constitutional republic, it speaks well of a politician when he resists the temptation to exceed his authority. It is therefore tempting to give Vice President Pence the benefit of the doubt in this regard.

But he cannot be let off so easily.

We need to look at the election of 2020 like a medieval war between city-states, in which an enemy has crossed a sea to fight, and has passed over the outer mountain ranges or across the rivers that nature had provided the city-state as protection... and the enemy has finally approach the city limits, where the city had a fortress wall surrounded by a deep moat.

Vice President Pence was that last line of defense. He was to govern the wall around the city…

And instead of holding firm to protect his city against the invaders… Vice President Pence threw down his sword, opened the gates, and welcomed them in.

Why? Apparently because, after all this, the beautiful stone walls and rod iron portcullises of this fine city were just too pretty to see them damaged by arrows and battering rams. Appearances, in the end, were more important to him than the risk of a corrupt enemy taking control of our government.

Copyright 2022 John F Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer and actor. A one-time county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009.

A collection of John’s Illinois Review articles about vote fraud, The Tales of Little Pavel, and his 2021 political satires about current events, Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes One and Two, are available, in either paperback or eBook, only on Amazon.


TOPICS: Conspiracy; Government; History; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: election2020; electoralcollege; fantasy; mikepence; reality; votefraud
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To: TigersEye; Jet Jaguar; !1776!

Why wouldn’t clicking on his forum posts take you to any number of posters with 1776 in their screen name, then?

There are a number of them....including this thread’s OP.

How is !1776! even getting pinged?

🤔


41 posted on 02/12/2022 9:12:37 PM PST by Jane Long (What we were told was a “conspiracy theory” in 2020 is now fact. 🙏🏻 Ps 33:12)
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To: !1776!

Hope you don’t let your ego get the better of you.

Trump 2024!


42 posted on 02/12/2022 9:19:50 PM PST by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.)
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To: Jane Long

Thought provoking! It’s weird. I am intrigued.


43 posted on 02/12/2022 9:20:36 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
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To: Jane Long

You’d have to ask someone who knows a lot more about computers than I do.
And knows FR software. Like John Robinson.

I was just making my best guess.


44 posted on 02/12/2022 9:24:10 PM PST by TigersEye (Ashli Babbitt was murdered)
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To: !1776!
Okay - you know best - his ability (or lack thereof) to connect with voters worked so much last time that we now have Brandon.

Your premise is garbage. It is so out of tune with reality it's not worth picking apart.

45 posted on 02/12/2022 9:27:48 PM PST by TigersEye (Ashli Babbitt was murdered)
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To: TigersEye; Jane Long
"I think the software has been confused" ~ "Apparently it doesn't recognize exclamation marks as being part of a handle"


That's pretty much what I mentioned to another FReeper in a PM..
46 posted on 02/12/2022 9:31:52 PM PST by Bikkuri (I am proud to be a PureBlood.)
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To: Bikkuri; TigersEye

🤷‍♀️

Only The Shadow knows :-)

47 posted on 02/12/2022 9:35:03 PM PST by Jane Long (What we were told was a “conspiracy theory” in 2020 is now fact. 🙏🏻 Ps 33:12)
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To: Bikkuri

Computers aren’t perfect. Yet. :)


48 posted on 02/12/2022 9:37:00 PM PST by TigersEye (Ashli Babbitt was murdered)
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To: Jim Robinson

It’s not ego - it’s just pointing out the obvious.

There is no way President Trump loses if he stuck to his accomplishments, plans, and just wasn’t an egomaniac. But he couldn’t avoid the latter.

Like it or. Not, it’s the truth. And Trump 2024 puts a 77 year old on the ballot, and one that had great base support - but huge negatives from the majority of voters. The mid term wave will have rolled through, and there is going to have to be something electable in 2024 and it won’t be President Trump.

Elections matter - time for a reality check around here…


49 posted on 02/12/2022 11:32:04 PM PST by !1776!
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To: Jane Long

I didn’t bash President Trump - just pointed out the obvious.

He should be in a second term, but isn’t - not because of election fraud - because he couldn’t get out of his own way.

As far as my posting history- you’ve been down that path before (multiple times) and your paranoia can go to the powers that be to get rid of me if they so wicpsh at any time,..


50 posted on 02/12/2022 11:37:49 PM PST by !1776!
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To: TigersEye

Other than the fact that he lost, my premise is garbage, I agree…


51 posted on 02/12/2022 11:40:32 PM PST by !1776!
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To: !1776!

True. That is the only part you got right. The only part that makes any sense.


52 posted on 02/13/2022 12:12:44 AM PST by TigersEye (Ashli Babbitt was murdered)
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To: !1776!; Jim Robinson

There is no way President Trump loses if he stuck to his accomplishments, plans, and just wasn’t an egomaniac. But he couldn’t avoid the latter.

Like it or. Not, it’s the truth. And Trump 2024 puts a 77 year old on the ballot, and one that had great base support - but huge negatives from the majority of voters. The mid term wave will have rolled through, and there is going to have to be something electable in 2024 and it won’t be President Trump.


Wow....doubling down on your smugness and ignorance, to the boss, after being warned. That takes nerve.

What ‘huge negatives, from the voters’?? Are you talking about the 81 million Briben voters? LOL.

I’d ask you to post your posting history supporting any of the great things Pres Trump has done for this country, or, criticizing the Deep State for all that they have done, to stop Trump.....only....I’d guess you cannot.....not because you have NOT done so, but, because YOU HAVE NO POSTING HISTORY.

Something no other FReeper can say, that I am aware of.


53 posted on 02/13/2022 9:15:15 AM PST by Jane Long (What we were told was a “conspiracy theory” in 2020 is now fact. 🙏🏻 Ps 33:12)
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To: !1776!

To !1776!

We’re talking at cross purposes here, clearly, because you so dislike President Trump, you’re willing to blind yourself to the reality of 2020.

I am not a blind defender of President Trump. I was a NeverTrumper in 2015 and 2016... all the way until Labor Day, I was begging the GOP to find a way to eject him from the ticket and run somebody else - Cruz, Walker, Jindal, SOMEBODY. Because I thought that he couldn’t be trusted to be a conservative, and because I thought his personality would get the party in trouble.

But once he won, I did what a lot of NeverTrumpers refused to do: I gave him a chance. And it turned out I was wrong on one of those two points. Yes, his personality got the party in trouble... but he was NOT a fake after all. He governed more conservatively in many ways than any former president for a century.

Trump was bold and tough and did many great things. Not everything... congress beat him in some areas, like spending, and he compromised way too much on the China Virus ...

but generally speaking, he was a good president. And that’s why he was re elected, probably by a margin of about 74 million to 50 million.

You don’t want to admit that there was massive vote fraud, because it hurts your narrative; you want to believe that everybody else hated Trump as much as you do.

But even if they did, they still voted for him over Biden. I haven’t the slightest doubt in the world.

There is a massive problem with vote fraud in America, and if it isn’t dealt with, no Republican - not the good ones, not the bad ones, not the ones you like, not the ones I like - is going to have a chance.

Non citizen voting, double and triple voting, photocopies of ballots dumped in the mail or dumped in the drop boxes at night... it goes on and on. The amount of vote fraud - virtually 100% of it by Democrats - is off the charts.

And what this means is... forget the presidency for a second... there are tons of Democrats currently holding state, county, and federal office who don’t belong there either.

These fake ballots aren’t just for the presidency. They’re for every office. I maintain that in most states, if a democrat won with anything less than 55/45, the republican was probably the real winner. In some states, like Pennsylvania, Illinois and Georgia, it’s probably more like 60/40.

There are nursing homes in Chicago where you see 250 reliable democrat votes from patients who are virtually comatose. Their nursing home administrators cast ballots on their behalf. There are busloads of patronage workers in New Orleans who ride around town all day casting ballots in the names of nonvoting names on the rolls in each precinct from dawn to dark. There are a hundred different techniques like that, all over the country. They add up.

Allowing the 2020 election to stand has emboldened the democrats.

You ask why on earth the Biden/Harris/Schumer/Pelosi crowd is being so stubbornly communist nowadays, despite the clear polling that shows the public hates them for it?

Because 2020 empowered them. They figure they don’t have to fear elections anymore. If they could get away with what they did in 2020, they can steal the races forever.

That’s why all republicans must unify to oppose the vote fraud. Not just for Trump, who I agree will be too old at 78 to be our nominee in 2024 anyway, but for EVERY Republican up and down the ballot from coast to coast.

We must demand honest elections. We must never put up with such theft again.


54 posted on 02/13/2022 10:12:42 AM PST by jfd1776 (John F. Di Leo, Illinois Review Columnist)
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To: jfd1776
no Republican - not the good ones, not the bad ones, not the ones you like, not the ones I like - is going to have a chance.

You are quite wrong about that.

There are lots of Republicans - most of them, in fact - who not only pose no threat to the regime, but who in fact support it without reservation.

Did you know that East German Volkskammer had not just one, but eight or nine opposition parties?

The Republican Party, as presently constituted, recognizes the "leading role" of the Deep State, the equivalent of the Social Democratic Party in East Germany, and as long as that is true, elected Republicans - in the minority, OR IN THE MAJORITY, will continue as a vital part of the regime.

The regime could not exist without the Republican Party.

So, stop worrying about the GOP. As long as the Deep State remains in power, the GOP will be just fine.

55 posted on 02/13/2022 10:26:15 AM PST by Jim Noble (The nation cannot be saved until the GOP is destroyed)
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To: !1776!

“But, Trump lost - even with a good economy, delivering on his promises, etc., because he is a blowhard that made the debates about him instead of what he accomplished for the US.

That’s why he lost, plain and simple. Learn from it or repeat it. I prefer the former.”

Trump lost because he was a blowhard?

Trump won the 2020 election. Fraud in 5 states and Pence/Rinos kept Trump from office and installed the demented pedophile instead.

Learn from it.


56 posted on 02/14/2022 3:46:19 PM PST by Reddy ( B.O. stinks)
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To: Responsibility2nd

If Pence was a smart man, which he clearly he’s not, he would have resigned the office of VEEP on the morning of Jan 6th and thrown the USA into A VERY MUCH NEEDED CONSTITUTIONAL CRISES. He should have refused to certify a clearly fraudulent election and walked away.


57 posted on 02/14/2022 3:51:21 PM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: Reddy
Clap, clap, clap.

Penicillin works on that.

58 posted on 02/14/2022 3:54:53 PM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: !1776!

Right Senile Joe broke every election record and he really got 80 million votes. You are an idiot or a troll....


59 posted on 02/14/2022 3:58:34 PM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: central_va

Applause, applause, applause.


60 posted on 02/14/2022 4:09:18 PM PST by Reddy ( B.O. stinks)
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