Posted on 01/04/2021 8:12:08 AM PST by Red Badger
The House of Representatives and the Senate on Sunday adopted rules that outline how the counting of Electoral College votes will take place on Jan. 6.
The rules were passed without recorded votes. Instead, a voice vote was used in both chambers.
The guidance, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), says the chambers will meet in a joint session on Jan. 6 presided over by Vice President Mike Pence.
Pence, as president of the Senate, will open “all the certificates and papers purporting to be certificates of the electoral votes,” the rules state, a nod to how seven states sent so-called competing electors, or certificates for both Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, to Washington.
The certificates and papers will be opened, presented, and acted upon in alphabetical order, starting with Alabama.
This is when dozens of Republicans—50 representatives and 12 senators, according to an Epoch Times tally—are planning to object to some certificates, alleging election irregularities including voter fraud and failure to follow state election laws.
That will trigger a withdrawal from the joint session and a two-hour debate, followed by votes in each chamber. Only with a majority vote from both the House and the Senate would a challenge be upheld, which even supporters find unlikely, considering Democrats who control the House and Senate Republican leadership, including McConnell, have expressed disapproval with the plan to object.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a letter to colleagues on Sunday noted that objections can happen but said, at the end of the day, Biden “will be officially declared the next president.”
“On Monday, we will have a clearer picture of how many state votes will be subject to an objection. Our choice is not to use the forum to debate the presidency of Donald Trump,” she added.
Reps. Ron Estes (R-Kan.), Tracey Mann (R-Kan.), and Jacob LaTurner (R-Kan.) said Sunday they will join in the objections, saying in a statement that several states are “facing serious allegations of voter fraud and violations of their own state law.”
“This action is not taken lightly and comes after extensive study and research. Kansans deserve to know that all legal, and only legal, votes were counted. We hope our actions begin to restore the confidence of tens of millions of our fellow Americans that feel their sacred right to vote is under attack,” they added.
Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) also announced Sunday they’ll object.
But seven Republican representatives, including several strong Trump supporters, said they will not join in the effort, and denounced the move.
“Of the six states as to which questions have been raised, five have legislatures that are controlled by Republicans, and they all have the power to send a new slate of electoral votes to Congress if they deem such action appropriate under state law. Unless that happens between now and Jan. 6, 2021, Congress will have no authority to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” the group wrote in a statement.
“To take action otherwise—that is, to unconstitutionally insert Congress into the center of the presidential election process—would amount to stealing power from the people and the states. It would, in effect, replace the Electoral College with Congress, and in so doing strengthen the efforts of those on the left who are determined to eliminate it or render it irrelevant.”
The weekend saw a flurry of action, with 11 senators following Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in announcing they’d join in the objections unless Congress appoints a commission to examine alleged election irregularities. The idea is modeled on the panel formed in 1877 amid a contested election.
Hawley’s Dec. 30 announcement triggered a number of House members to announce their intention to object. The number planning to do so has more than doubled since then.
A segment of Republicans are focusing on Pence’s role in the proceedings. They sued the vice president and asked a court to rule he has the “exclusive authority” to decide between dueling electors.
A judge dismissed the case and an appeals court rejected an appeal.
Pence had asked the court to dismiss the suit but said through a spokesman on Saturday that he supports efforts to challenge electoral votes.
“Vice President Pence shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election,” Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, said in the statement sent to media outlets.
Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber
Oops!
Meant to add “We shall see”
yep, but if you watch the deliberations, you can see they are caught up in it, and the legal advice they are getting.
The military will not intervene. There is no constitutional basis for them to do so.
Even if the Insurrection Act is invoked, it will not stop the 20th Amendment from operating. A President can't just say that the 20th Amendment is not in effect.
Nor can a President who has not been declared / certified / etc the winner of the Electoral College voting demand he be sworn in on 01/20. It would be unlawful and orders to obey such a request would I believe considered unlawful orders and thus, not required to be obeyed.
“Most politicians do not live in that space. They can not comprehend someone like Ceasar or Trump crossing the Rubicon and letting the dice fly.”
I do agree that you simply do not corner a guy like Trump. Trump is extremely competitive, he NEVER plays to lose, and the guy is both a genius and sleeps only 4 hours/day. He literally is thinking of ways to outsmart his enemies while they are sleeping (just like Napoleon, btw). Add to that the FACT that many Dems/Leftists have threatened to jail (or worse) not just him, but members of his family - that practically guarantees a reaction, because there is simply no way that he will stand still for that.
“yep, but if you watch the deliberations, you can see they are caught up in it, and the legal advice they are getting.”
I would pay to see the look on your face when Jan 20th comes and goes and still no president Joe.
Interested a friendly bet to the current FReepathon on who is correct?
Sounds like your saying that his 2018 EO is baseless or null and void.
What else does a foreign government need to do in order to qualify such acts as insurrection???
Very good analogy. Thank you for the history lesson on the Russian revolution. It makes me wonder if in fact indeed we are going through a second American revolution right here right now. As we well know, four years ago Obama, the FBI, the CIA and the deep state attempted a coup d’état against Donald Trump. It failed
On January 20, we will know if their second attempt at a coup will pass or fail.
Not at all. But the EO is not superior to the U.S. Constitution.
One side or the other will have a lot of explaining to do come sundown on the 20th that's for sure.
Kyle Becker
@kylenabecker
SUPERCUT: Democrats in 2000 & 2004 elections *OBJECT* to counting votes in the Electoral College.
https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1345455540508483586
Does the EO involve usage of the military or not???
“To take action otherwise—that is, to unconstitutionally insert Congress into the center of the presidential election process—would amount to stealing power from the people and the states. It would, in effect, replace the Electoral College with Congress, and in so doing strengthen the efforts of those on the left who are determined to eliminate it or render it irrelevant.”
So was it also unconstitutional for Congress to pass legislation in 1876 or 1877 appointing a 15-member commission to resolve disputes involving dueling slates of electors from 4 states in the Hayes v. Tilden contest.
Seriously, the GOP legislootures have failed miserably to check the fraud in their own states. And you would think Congress should have an implied power to at least challenge the results in states that have dueling slates of electors - seven states in all, IIRC.
BTW, the above wimpy message in italics brought to you by the Congressional Catch-22 Caucus.
PING!
The military will not obey what they consider to be an unlawful order. From their perspective a valid election was held and the winner was Biden. If we can believe the polls the majority of Americans believe the election was valid (61%).
The only way the military would side with a President who said the election was fraudulent is if there were investigations and convictions by state governments or the DOJ involving fraud/malfeasance in the election. Or if there were court decisions finding the same.
We have had the exact opposite. No convictions for fraud. The attorney general explicitly saying the Justice department found no evidence of wide spread fraud. The federal cyber security head saying that the election was secure. And the courts ruling against Trump in about 61 cases.
On top of this some of the people supporting the fraud election argument are looking like nut cases(I’m looking at you Lin) or liars (Powell with her “expert” witness that turned out to have failed out of MI school).
If Trump orders the military to keep him in power after congress counts the electoral votes on Jan 6th (and of course those votes show Biden the winner) they will ignore that order. If Trump attempted to use other organizations (Proud Boys, etc.) to try and stay in power the military will crush that attempt.
What we will see 1/6 is the forming of the America First Caucus in the House and Senate.
In the future, I will vote as if any not standing in objection are complicit.
What you neglect to consider is the situation in which there is an insurrection or coup (and a coup can be by violent means, or it can be by illegal means - the idea is that the rightful government is overthrown). What does the Constitution say about this? That the President has the duty to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Period. It is not a suicide pact - it doesn’t say, “Well, if you can use legal means to succeed against the coup, great, if not then forget the whole system of government in this document.” Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and did a bunch of other things that ordinarily would be strictly verboten...but he saved the Union and is (generally) looked upon as an unmitigated hero for having done so (though many Southerners disagree rather vehemently). These are, tragically, similar times - there is a mortal threat to our Republic, in the form of a Leftist/Communist co-opting of the Dem Party, with the goal of permanent power for the elites of that party. If they “win” the 2 GA races, then they will dispose of the filibuster, which will enable court-packing, leading to the end of our basic rights, result in at least 2 new states with 4 Dem Senators, and give us at least 20 million new citizens overnight, 85% of whom are inclined to vote Dem to begin with (and who will be further inclined to do so when bribed with big cash payments created out of the ether by the Fed). This is not your father’s election; these are NOT normal times.
Keep in mind that part of Alinsky’s method of taking power is to force the other side to abide by their own rules, while simultaneously having his side abiding by no rules except those which help them win. THAT is the situation that we’re in right now - with people like you spouting the Constitution...without realizing that by scrupulously abiding by every clause we are playing directly into their hands. Founder and President John Adams said,
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
So the situation now is that an immoral and irreligious group of people in our nation (aided by foreigners intent upon weakening this country) have gamed the system (the Constitution) so as to grab power themselves. They KNOW FOR A FACT that it is impossible to prove massive election fraud in the short time between November 3 and January 6, and have blackmailed and/or bribed many people on many levels of government to simply ignore any facts; they also have virtually the entirety of the media and all of social media systematically censoring the facts, so as to lessen support for finding out what happened because “nothing happened” - don’t you know?
These are NOT the days of our youth, in which we KNEW that elections were fair (but probably weren’t), and everyone respected the results. This is a coup against our entire system - Trump could be ANY Republican standing in the way of the Dems gaining permanent power, and the results would be the same except for the willingness of some other Republican to FIGHT. You don’t react to an emergency with non-emergency actions or tools, not unless you intend to have the emergency destroy your life
Regretfully, the examples of nations being free (as we define the term) are incredibly rare over the course of human history. Those examples are usually short-lived, and the simple reason is that it takes eternal vigilance to remain free...and most people are too lazy for that. That, plus the natural impulse of anyone hungry for power to constantly try to rule others. The latter is an inexorable force, and hard to resist for very long (hence the reason why you imprison or kill people like that, else you don’t remain free for long).
Our soil has no magic pixie dust in it - we are simply not immune to the forces of history. What remains to be seen (IMHO) is whether the people of this country have anything close to the guts and the fortitude that our Founding Generation did - because the vast majority of our so-called leaders simply do not (if, that is, they’re not actively part of the coup, or bought off to look the other way). It is up to us...but we need a leader (like Trump) to kick off the festivities. If he calmly walks away, get prepared to wear chains for the rest of your life, because I don’t think that any revolt against the usurpers, the destroyers of our Republic, will take place.
“Does the EO involve usage of the military or not???”
EO is here:
“I read on one Thread here that the Procedure Rules. cannot be changed in an Election cycle “
That’s sort of hilarious. As if THAT hasn’t happened 100 times during this election already. Procedure Rules mean as much to the RATs as the U.S. Constitution does.
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