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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29521 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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For those not familiar, the theory of how to accomplish this came from John Eastman:

[1] VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro Tempore Grassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).

[2] When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

[3] At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of "electors appointed" – the language of the 12th Amendment – is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe. A "majority of the electors appointed" would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

[4] Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who now claim, contrary to Tribe's prior position, that 270 is required. So Pence says, fine. Pursuant to the 12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote ..." Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.

[5] One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed and, upon getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break into their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean that a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one – a constitutional no-no (as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone – Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. – should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.

[6] The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position – that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.

This is, of course, quite norm breaking. I think it's reasonable to argue that it's not even a good-faith legal theory, that it's just plain illegal and Eastman knew it was illegal, and he was just doing wishcasting to try to give power to his guy. But really, it's not any more of a "coup" then the Compromise of 1877.

"Coup" is the closest word I can think to describe it. To my reasoning, one party is unilaterally inventing a conspiracy (note that "election fraud" only seems to be a concern when a Democrat wins) then using said conspiracy to attempt to stay on power when legitimately he was the losing candidate and must transition power.

Let me put it this way. Let us pretend that my accusations were true of a hypothetical person that is not Trump, and that they had succeeded. What term would be better to describe it?

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