According to the Constitution and related law (Article II Section 1, The 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887), the states have the authority to set election law within their state. Every state has laws on the books indicating that the person who receives the greatest number of votes will be awarded all of the electoral votes from that state. (Maine and Nebraska are exceptions to the winner-take-all rule). Every state has laws enumerating procedures for contesting the results. These procedures include automatic or requested recounts if the margin of victory is within a certain percentage.
In every single state (and for the purposes of discussing the presidential election The District of Columbia will be included as a "state") the winner was clear - automatic and requested recounts confirmed the winner with no material change in numbers.
Usually, at this point, we view everything else that follows as pro forma and consider the election a done deal.
Unlike every other election in the past 140 years, the loser of the election claimed, despite there being no doubt about the results, that he had actually won and that only cheating, fraud (the massive kind) and dead people voting had robbed him of his victory. The objections came in two broad categories: (1) fraud, and (2) illegal or unconstitutional provisions in state election law. Despite the president (the loser in this case) claiming loudly and continuously that there was fraud on a massive scale, the Attorney General, the head of the Department of Homeland Security's cyber security agency, the U.S. Secretary of State, and governors, state secretaries of state, election commissioners and other local officials in every single state have assured us that there was no election fraud, sometimes with the qualifier "on a scale that would have affected the results". In the few cases where there were specific allegations by Trump or his allies, they have been explained as lack of understanding of ballot counting procedures or drawing conclusions based on incomplete or erroneous data. In fact none of the lawsuits by the Trump campaign or Trump's allies or lawyers have alleged fraud, but have targeted election procedures and laws. Every single lawsuit over election procedures has been dismissed, some due to lack of standing, but most due to lack of evidence.
The next step in the process is the certification of the election results in each state. Trumpists have claimed that the Constitution gives the state legislatures the authority to select the electors and therefore could overrule the vote if they thought it wasn't valid. They get this from Article II Section 1: "Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors". Of course they ignore the clause "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct" which gives the legislature the freedom to delegate this to the Secretary of State or an election commission the procedures for appointing electors. As I stated above, every legislature has tied this appointment to whoever received the most votes. At least one local election commission in Michigan, and later the state election board, attempted to block certification, even though their certification was, like virtually every other step, a formality.
The state certification process follows any challenges or recounts and serve to acknowledge what came before. The states set their own standards for certification, and resolve all disputes internally. The next step occurs when the electors meet in their respective state capitols and cast their votes. This also is a formality. They have no authority under the laws of any state to do anything other than cast a vote for whomever they are pledged to vote for. The casting of electoral votes, unlike everything else in the process, happened without any drama.
The final step is the delivery of envelopes containing the electoral votes to the Vice President, presiding over a joint session of Congress. If I haven't been absolutely clear about formalities, this step also is usually just a formality. According to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, the only job of the Vice President is to open the envelopes while clerks tabulate the votes (of course we already know the result) and announce formally the results of the election. However, in the aftermath of a contested election in 1876, a federal election law was passed that added some additional detail to the proceedings. It's a long & confusing law, but the relevant portion gives Members of the House of Representatives the right to object to any state's electoral votes as long as at least one Senator agrees. Once an objection is raised, each chamber debates the objection, then votes to accept or reject that state's electoral votes. This is the law that some Republicans are leaning on for a last stand fight to keep Trump as president. What the Sedition Wing of the Republican Party isn't telling us is that the same law emphasizes that disputes about electors are to be resolved within the states and that the procedure for objection is designed to address a situation where there have been competing slates of electors due to questions about the authority of the officials who signed the states' certifications. 1876_United_States_presidential_election
Republican Representatives and Senators who have committed to objecting to the results in swing states that went for Biden claim that this is necessary due to the "many allegations of fraud". (See above for a discussion of the alleged fraud) While this was going on, a recording of Trump attempting to pressure the Georgia Secretary of State to "find" enough votes to give him victory...by one vote. Surely he has made similar calls to other states.
Congress meets in two days for the next phase of this attempted coup. I wonder what insanity will follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment