Free Republic

No, no, no, a thousand times no. Pence has no authority to do anything but preside and count. Congress itself has no authority to change anything.

The states have certified their electors and there isn’t a single disputed slate in a single state that has been sent that would need Congressional involvement at all, both constitutionally and statutorily. Everything that happens today is ceremonial and ministerial.

What started with some legitimate questions about state legislative election authority vis-a-vis other state actors has descended into dark farce and lies, bordering on sedition. Once the state legislators decided they were ok with the voters’ choice of electors and didn’t defend whatever prerogatives they felt may have been traduced, that was it.

The idea that a single person, the Vice President, has the authority to intervene in an election in the 50 states is preposterous heading toward insane. Could anyone imagine Biden in January 2017 stepping in and trying to overturn Trump’s win and installing Hillary? Ridiculous on every level.

Honestly, this is embarrassing at this point.

It can be done at the county level and then you just send in the bogus numbers to the state level and the state level is D so they’re fine just going along with them.

Someone somewhere needs to do a full forensic timeline on this with network video and internet stories, including the voting “pauses” and the numbers on the screens/websites. It should include all mentions of “new” or “found” ballots, together with time attributions. The whole idea of “finding” ballots doesn’t really add up, and that goes double for states like PA where supposedly they were supposed to be paying strict attention to ballots that arrived before and after 8 PM.

At this point, I’m still of the opinion that I’m not even believing the tentative numbers in the swing states unless and until the SOS puts his/her official name to them and officially certifies them. That could be added to the list of how you’d go about doing this:

10. Carry tentative, unofficial numbers that look like a Biden win while never actually committing to them, preventing lawsuits from ripening and preventing Trump from having an actual number to point to and try to overturn.

I won’t raise my voice either but the “elected by the voters of the Commonwealth” part includes, inherently, “according to the election laws we pass.”

The media is so clueless that they have no idea about this, but it will become clear soon that we’re at the point where the legislatures of MI, AZ, GA, and PA could take the presidency for Trump. Trump and his people will start agitating for that, and we’re starting to see the legislatures agitate for it. The next president really rests in their hands and there’s an ever-growing basis for them to do it.

Once this becomes clear to the media and leftists — it’s not yet — this has the potential to completely blow up.

We’re really at an unprecedented point in our history here.

The underlying premise in delegating the selection of electors to the voters is that the voters vote according to the terms of the legislature’s laws. If that premise fails, and electors are sent based on a vote done contrary to the legislature’s laws, the delegation can sensibly be withdrawn and the legislature’s underlying authority exercised directly.

Yeah, it’s basically “Do what we say or we’re going to name our own electors.” Legislature’s threat has a lot behind it.

I think it’s at a point where if a legislature insists on appointing electors based on their election legislation not being followed, the Supreme Court would uphold that appointment.

I doubt the Supremes would reach out and literally do that on behalf of a legislature that hasn’t tried itself.

But in point of fact, we’re at a place where it looks like PA may be about to certify a slate of electors selected unconsitutionally; indeed, in direct contravention of the explicit constitutional words and even kind of in the face of a clear warning on October 28 from a faction of the Supremes.

Still anyone’s guess where it goes from there. It’s more a matter of institutions and institutional prerogatives and overall good of the country than “voter fraud.” But PA did flout a Supreme Court warning and probably an order, and the law is clear. That’s where we’re heading, in probably about two weeks, and the pressure on the Court either way will be monumental. Indeed, all the jumping ahead by the media and Biden is to put that kind of pressure on the Court. They may just punt. They may hold firm.

Turbulent times.

I can’t see the Supremes stepping in and defending every single state legislature here and throwing out every ballot that didn’t conform with state election laws — but certainly Trump should be asking them to do exactly that.

Trump really needs a talented lawyer up front explaining these things to the public and the media, rather than Rudy blabbering constantly about fraud. Rudy has his place, but lead legal spokesman is not that place.

(Clearing up last post: A PA ballot is consitutionally invalid if it was received after 8 pm on Election Night, even if there’s no fraud involved at all.)

Trump and supporters concede ground they don’t need to concede when they talk so much about “voter fraud,” thus letting the media frame the issue. There probably was fraud there, too, but it doesn’t matter. If the Supreme Court rules as it’s signaled it’s going to rule in the PA case, a ballot is constitutionally invalid, even if there wasn’t any fraud in its completion and submission at all.

The real question here is what remedy is going to be available if the PA SOS certifies a constitutionally-deficient slate of electors and whether the Supremes are going to require the legislature to step up and defend its prerogatives before ruling. Then the question becomes what other states had situations where bureaucrats or judges directly modified the express voting statutes on the books, including all the settlements and consent decrees in the Dems voting rights suits last spring and summer. Properly understood, an election board bureaucrat in Georgia has no authority to settle a Dem lawsuit under terms that conflict with the election statutes of the legislature.

... and then that November 20 date means they can no longer “find” any votes to replace bad ones. The battle isn’t really joined until these states commit to numbers.

The GA counties have to vouch for their numbers, and the SOS has to ultimately certify them, by November 20. Until that date, this is all just noise. When they actually commit to some actual count, we’ll know more. (Then the same thing for PA, NC, AZ, NV a few days later. GA is first at November 20.)

There’s actually time built into the system where the state officials can be non-committal about the numbers, and there’s time enough for media/institutional pressure to get the “losing” candidate to “concede” which would then give the officials peace of mind to post numbers they either know or suspect are bad. That very well could be what’s going on here and why we’re seeing all the pressure. Obviously the officials should not be given such peace of mind. Until they actually have to put their names to certified numbers all this is primarily noise and fluff.

It looks like the earliest date for certification by a state SOS of the counts in any of the swing/contested states is Georgia on November 20. So November 20 is the earliest date anyone has to actually commit to any of these counts, rather than just talking about them or putting still incomplete numbers on their website. Until then, all this is just talk and noise. There’s still 10+ days for a SOS to blink.

The deadline under PA law for the county boards to file their returns with the SOS is November 23. So they have another couple weeks where they can be non-committal, but by then they have to stand by the “numbers” they’ve found. A cynic might say that all this pressure for Trump to “concede” is to make it so the counties in these states don’t have to actually meaningfully attest to these numbers, i.e., to take away the threat that the numbers could be challenged. There’s no reason whatever for Trump to play along. Make them vouch for the numbers.

At this point, it’s a bit unclear why PA isn’t finishing the count and announcing Biden as the winner, etc. It seems like a strategic effort to prevent various lawsuits from ripening and running out the clock on potential remedies courts could order.

Alito also noted in his statement that there wasn’t enough time to hear the case on the merits and rule before Election Day. He also warned about exactly what we’re seeing happen.

The post-election “fight” doesn’t really even start until we see how the PA case at the Supreme Court shakes out. It looks like the SOS there basically just ignored the 8 pm order and it was the fact that she said she was going to mind the 8 pm order that gave Alito comfort to punt the case in the first place. If he finds out that was a lie or scam, there’s no way he’ll accept it, nor will probably even Roberts.

Technically, the case may not fully ripen until the SOS certifies the results. In theory at least, Trump could still win PA, which would moot the case.

Shrinking the time to do anything about it might be a strategic play on the SOS’s part not just in PA but in the other close states, which is why we haven’t seen any official certifications yet.

Yes, the statute is “received.” Philly and the other counties were supposed to have a hard break at 8 pm and anything “received” (that’s a word whose interpretation might become critical) after then was supposed to be set aside from the ballots already received. The SOS issued an order to the counties to do that and she had to do that because she told the Supremes she would.

Doubts that there was such a hard break, at such a relatively early time, are certainly proper here.