The motive: send it to the house. right?
They could, but they won’t.
There are not enough courageous Republicans.
Yes presumably this is the point of the entire effort. Prove to these Republican legislators that the cannot certify fraudulent results and submit to the electoral college, consigning the matter to the House for a single vote per state contest. Since Republicans control more state houses than Democrats, Trump will win the House electoral run-off and remain president, while Joe Biden will join Al Gore in the purgatory of “president-elect” infamy.
What if the Georgia recount shows that Trump won the state?
Should the state still decline to submit electors?
I just had a flashback to the Hollywood campaign in 2016 to try to convince electors to refuse to vote for Trump because...Trump.
Without ironclad red-handed evidence, not even 99% of Republicans are going to lift a finger against Democrats. 99% of Republicans do not want to find Democrats red-handed and will not look for such evidence and will suppress it if one of them finds it by accident, especially when Dems threaten their kids and homes.
We are the 1% and it is lonely at the top.
1) Florida's AG (or SOS, as it is in some states) had certified the results as Bush winning.
2) Florida's legislature didn't step in and stop it. Since the legislature didn't invoke their Article II privilege to choose their EC electors, the assumption was they agreed with the AG's vote tally -- Bush got the EC votes from Florida.
If my memory of that SCOTUS ruling is correct, applying that to today would mean silence from a state's legislature is seen as agreement with a state's AG for how the votes are tallied.
The electors have been chosen. The candidates party selected them and once the results are certified the voters of Georgia will have selected them. Under current law the legislature has no say in the matter because they assigned that role to the voters themselves. The legislature does not certify the vote, the Secretary of State does that. If they tried to change the process now the courts would never uphold it.
Election certification can be refused. It’s happened in Clark Co, (Vegas) for one local race.
It happened in Wayne County (Detroit) last night but two “republicans” later reversed course and certified the count.
If not certified, generally, states tell electoral colleges “vote your conscience” or, “stay home, we abdicate.”
Regardless of that, legal suits get heard and decided, locally, then possibly at state level on appeal, possibly USSC.
There is an entirely seperate legal issue playing out, as well. One human, by immutable laws of physics, cannot occupy both The White House and a prison cell simultaneously.
Thete is a fourth, again completely seperate process, playing out. Public...acceptance.
I saw cities burn, all summer. I also saw the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen in pics from DC, Saturday.
Two trains... one track. We’ll see. Keep your powder dry.
Please correct me if I wrong, but I read this to mean it is the governor of Georgia, and not the legislature, that certifies the slate of presidential electors:
https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2019/title-21/chapter-2/article-12/section-21-2-499/
A Rush Limbaugh caller pegged it yesterday. If the great steal is going to be successful, Red states should flat out refuse to name electors and ridicule Biden with 100% of the Electoral Vote, just like Venezuela and Cuba
On one hand, Art. II, s. 1 provides that "Each state shall appoint" electors, and courts uniformly construe "shall" to be mandatory. However, no mechanism is provided to compel a state to appoint electors.
On the other hand, both Art. II, s. 1 and the 12th Amendment define the threshold for election by the electoral college to be the "majority of the whole number of Electors appointed," not the majority of electoral votes apportioned. That would seem to anticipate the possibility that less than the full number of possible electors may be appointed. It also means that, if a state does not appoint electors, then fewer than 270 electoral votes would then be required to win in the electoral college.
Chapter 1 of Title 3 of the U.S. Code contains the statutes governing presidential elections, but Congress explicitly leaves these issues to state law, as they must because the Constitution grants Congress no role in the appointment of electors other than to receive and count their votes.
The closest historical case I can think of is 1876, when there were disputed appointments of electors from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Of course, that was resolved extra-constitutionally by Congress in the Compromise of 1877.
If I had to bet, I would bet that the Supreme Court would hold that a state cannot be compelled to appoint electors. If one or more states fail to appoint electors, the electoral college meets and votes anyway and a majority is determined by the number of electors appointed.
Has anything been posted on this story? This is from Fox News, so I didn’t post it.
BREAKING: Michigan Republican Electors Harassed And Forced To Change Vote
190,314 views•Nov 18, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW1YzQY_1Ro
The Constitution does not specify any definite procedure.
If the State legislature insists that only Democrats will be appointed, and enacts such a policy into law, then that is the end of it.
That appears to be the effective result in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia. The "Pretense-of-Law" allows unlimited election fraud by the Democrats to insure their candidate wins.
I can see a few problems with the legitimacy of such a Government. These cannot be addressed by clever legal arguments or more "elections".
Typically, a dispute of a state’s Electors result in the submission of two slates to Congress.
Don’t think there’s ever been a case of no Electors. There have been some replies about why that wouldn’t be to the point.
If they don’t set a slate of electors, they disenfranchise the voters in the state. Bad move politically. But no, the Constitution does not require states submit a slate of electors.
No = 1864 southern states not participating. Lincoln won a majority present and voting.
What if in 2016, Trump lost Pennsylvania (20 EV) and Wisconsin (10 EV)? That would have made the Electoral College 276-262, and Trump would still have won.Now suppose that Michigan (16 EV), which Trump won 47.6% to 47.4%, politically chose to delay certifying the vote and not send their Electors to the Electoral College. This would have made the Electoral Vote 262-260 Clinton in an Electoral College with only 522 appointed Electors. The threshold to win would have been a majority of APPOINTED Electors, or 262 votes cast.
Clinton would have won in 2016 in this scenario, because Michigan chose to withhold their 16 Trump Electors from participating in the Electoral College.
3 U.S. Code CHAPTER 1—PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND VACANCIES is full of references to "appointed" Electors, which is being consistent with the Constitution.
If a state chooses to withhold appointment of Electors in order to influence the outcome against the vote of the people, how would that action be perceived?
-PJ
We have been discussing this in some depth on the Arizona Board. I was emailed a copy of a memo from the AZ Legislature’s Legal Council (I am NOT the Representative it was addressed to):
ARIZONA LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL MEMO
November 12, 2020
TO: Representative
FROM: , General Counsel
RE: Selection of Presidential Electors (R-54-142)
This memorandum is in response to your questions about the appointment of
presidential electors and the ability of the legislature to change this process for the current presidential election.
In regard to presidential electors, the United States Constitution provides:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may
direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no
Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit
under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2.
Under this authority, the legislature may select the presidential electors, it may
allow the voters to select the presidential electors and it may change how the electors are selected. McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 35 (1892); Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 52930 (2000). However, the constitution provides that Congress determines the time of choosing presidential electors. U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 3. The Court in McPherson and Bush did not address this Congressional authority because it was not an issue in those cases.
Under its constitutional authority, Congress has directed that “[t]he electors of
President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President.” 3 United States Code § 1.
The Arizona legislature has prescribed the method of appointment of presidential electors for this state by enacting several statutes, including Arizona Revised Statutes(A.R.S.) section 16212, which provides in part:
A. On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, 1956,
and quadrennially thereafter, there shall be elected a number of
presidential electors equal to the number of United States senators and
representatives in Congress from this state.
B. After the secretary of state issues the statewide canvass
containing the results of a presidential election, the presidential electors of
this state shall cast their electoral college votes for the candidate for
president and the candidate for vice president who jointly received the
highest number of votes in this state as prescribed in the canvass.
The statutes also provide that the chair of the state committee of each political
party that qualifies for a column on the general election ballot must appoint the
candidates for the office of presidential elector for the respective political party. A.R.S. section 16344.
To change how presidential electors are appointed, the legislature would have to
amend these statutory sections. However, the changes that the legislature might make to these statutes could not be applied to the current election, because the day for selecting presidential electors (November 3, 2020) has passed.
The current statutes on the selection of presidential electors were in effect on
November 3, 2020 and the people voted pursuant to statute to make the selection on that date. If there is a question about the conduct of the election, the election would have to be challenged in the courts. The legislature cannot change the 2020 election results through changing the statutory selection process for presidential electors.
This was followed up with a further opinion:
Representative ,
You are correct, the legislature does not have a role in certification of election results. The secretary of state, in the presence of the governor and attorney general, canvases the votes for the presidential electors. A.R.S. sec. 16-648, sub. A. A.R.S. sec. 16-212 provides:
B. After the secretary of state issues the statewide canvass containing the results of a presidential election, the presidential electors of this state shall cast their electoral college votes for the candidate for president and the candidate for vice president who jointly received the highest number of votes in this state as prescribed in the canvass.
Therefore, the legislature has no role in certifying the election results for presidential electors (or any election.)
Even if the legislature wanted to get involved in the certification process, I think it is prohibited from doing so by the Separation of Powers provision of the state constitution. Canvassing the vote and certifying the canvas appear to be executive functions, because they involves executing the law enacted by the legislature.
Sorry this is so long. There are also constitutional arguments to allow them to act as there have been rulings supporting the supremacy of the legislature. If they do act, the margin is so close, with lots of RINOs and McCainiacs, we would run the risk of them appointing the Biden electors. Not sure of the statutes in other states. Any way we go, it will end up in court.