Trump's Coup d'état.

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Meadmaker said:
I predict the Senate will vote to approve. Every Democrat will approve. At least a few Republicans will approve.

It's a shame that anyone will not approve, and it is a true shame on the Republican Party that we have to wonder if a lot of them will disapprove, but I predict that neither house will vote to not accept the votes.
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I agree, there will be a few holdouts voting no for some lost cause they think isn't. But there will be enough GOP Senators who aren't that stupid.
 
Meadmaker said:
Oh, right. I misread the question. If the House approves, but the Senate disapproves, the resolution to not accept the electors is defeated, the state certified electoral votes are counted, and Biden wins. 306 - 232, plus or minus a couple of faithless electors if that happens.
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That's it.

And to cover your previous post, the only time it goes to the House to decide where each and every state delegation has a single vote is when there is a tie.

Even if they could throw out the votes from those 4 States, Biden still wins 254 to 232.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I agree, there will be a few holdouts voting no for some lost cause they think isn't. But there will be enough GOP Senators who aren't that stupid.
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I wonder. It really depends on Pence. He presides over the process. Together with McConnell they could keep it a dignified no bull process. Or they could host a **** show where in the end Trump still loses. I despise McConnell. But he's a no-nonsense guy that runs the Senate with an iron hand. Also, I think we're assuming they will still control the Senate on the 6th.
 
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Resume said:
Maybe we could give Mexico Texas in exchange for their completing the wall . . . around Texas, and a vow to never let their residents emigrate, or even visit, the U.S. again. Except for Austin and environs, including their BBQ of course; we keep them.
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I could go for that. My niece lives in Austin and it's the only decent place in TX.
 
acbytesla said:
I wonder. It really depends on Pence. He presides over the process. Together with McConnell they could keep it a dignified no bull process. Or they could host a **** show where in the end Trump still loses. I despise McConnell. But he's a no-nonsense guy that runs the Senate with an iron hand. Also, I think we're assuming they will still control the Senate on the 6th.
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If the Democrats pull a win in Georgia for Senators, will they have a new Majority Leader before the 6th?
 
gnome said:
If the Democrats pull a win in Georgia for Senators, will they have a new Majority Leader before the 6th?
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Very unlikely that the results will be certified that fast.

On the 6th, there will be 51 Republican senators (Perdue is out, even if he eventually wins), and 48 Democratic senators.

Given that Romney, Murkowski, Toomey, Sasse, Collins have already recognized Biden as winner, it seems very unlikely that the Senate will vote to reject the count of State Electors.

And given that, I agree with acbytesla (except that I consider it a given that on the 6th, Republicans still control the Senate):
acbytesla said:
I wonder. It really depends on Pence. He presides over the process. Together with McConnell they could keep it a dignified no bull process. Or they could host a **** show where in the end Trump still loses. I despise McConnell. But he's a no-nonsense guy that runs the Senate with an iron hand. Also, I think we're assuming they will still control the Senate on the 6th.
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acbytesla said:
That's it.

And to cover your previous post, the only time it goes to the House to decide where each and every state delegation has a single vote is when there is a tie.

Even if they could throw out the votes from those 4 States, Biden still wins 254 to 232.
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Yes, but because he didn't get 270 EC votes then the decision goes back to the house on a one-vote-per-state basis and President Trump is re-elected.
 
The Don said:
Yes, but because he didn't get 270 EC votes then the decision goes back to the house on a one-vote-per-state basis and President Trump is re-elected.
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This theory has never been tested in courts before, but by the most straightforward and obvious meaning of the statute and the Constitution, the above is incorrect.

Here's the relevant section of the Constitution:

- "The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

The Constitution makes no provision allowing for Congress not to accept the electoral votes from a state. However, a federal law does make such a provision. Let us assume, for some reason, that some future Congress would do that. That law requires that both houses of Congress reject the electors, so it won't happen this time, but let's consider a hypothetical situation where it would happen. Would the candidates need 270 electoral votes, or would they need a majority of the remaining votes? i.e if Pennsylvani's 20 electoral votes were rejected by Congress, would a candidate need 270, or 260.

In order to claim that the candidate still needed 270, you would have to say that the electors of Pennsylvania were appointed, but Congress turned them down. I think a more straightforward reading is that the Congress declared that the appointment of the Pennsylvania electors was invalid. Therefore the total number of appointed electors would be 518, so the candidate would need 260.

For this election, there is no need to even think about this possibility, as there is no chance that the House of Representatives will reject the appointment of any electors at all.

Also, the statute that allows the Congress to reject electors doesn't make any provision for going back to the states and letting them try some other way to appoint electors. That state just loses its electors. They don't count, and the state doesn't get a do-over. Of course, this assumes that the Supreme Court accepts that the statute itself is constitutionally acceptable. There has never been a ruling on it.

For the future, I think a constitutional amendment is in order to be as certain as humanly possible about exactly what happens in an election. We shouldn't be wondering how a court might rule about the phrasing of a 200 year old document in order to figure out who is going to be President. It won't happen, but it should.
 
Meadmaker said:
I'm not sure the problem is truly the "mainstream" of Repbulicanism, although the bizarre fringe beliefs are being pulled in that direction. Let me explain my reasoning for those who might not be following it all the way.

I say that 106 legislators signing on to this has to be a result of fear of being "primaried", because there's no way 106 legislators could be this stupid. This lawsuit is absurd. The respectable conservatives who sometimes contribute to this board won't touch it, only the fringe. National Review won't touch it. Romney condemns it. Of those 106 legislators, an awful lot of them made it through law school. They aren't stupid, and they have legal training. They know this lawsuit has zero chance. There are a few people in Congress who are so blinded by ideology that they may as well be stupid, but most of them aren't.

However, they know that there is a hard core of the Republican electorate who demands complete party loyalty, and right now that means Trump loyalty. I don't think it's even a majority of the Republican voters. However, the majority of people don't vote in primary elections. The legislators know that if they are not loyal to Trump, Trump can tweet, "Congressman Smith is a RINO. We need better representation! Vote for Bill Trumpfan, who is a real Republican!", and a lot of people will do it. The majority of the country won't. The majority of the Republican voters probably wouldn't, but there is a chance that the majority of people who show up on a Tuesday to vote in an off year Republican primary just might, so they dare not take that chance.

As a result, the party's mainstream does get pulled to the right, and in this case, worse than that. Trump isn't just the right. He's the mindless version of it, plus a cult of personality figure, and politicians who might be reasonable in their hearts do not dare stand up to him, because they need the votes of his fans.
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Ideally, the electoral college was supposed to guard against this kind of thing. Its a useless complication.
 
Meadmaker said:
This theory has never been tested in courts before, but by the most straightforward and obvious meaning of the statute and the Constitution, the above is incorrect.

Here's the relevant section of the Constitution:

- "The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

The Constitution makes no provision allowing for Congress not to accept the electoral votes from a state. However, a federal law does make such a provision. Let us assume, for some reason, that some future Congress would do that. That law requires that both houses of Congress reject the electors, so it won't happen this time, but let's consider a hypothetical situation where it would happen. Would the candidates need 270 electoral votes, or would they need a majority of the remaining votes? i.e if Pennsylvani's 20 electoral votes were rejected by Congress, would a candidate need 270, or 260.

In order to claim that the candidate still needed 270, you would have to say that the electors of Pennsylvania were appointed, but Congress turned them down. I think a more straightforward reading is that the Congress declared that the appointment of the Pennsylvania electors was invalid. Therefore the total number of appointed electors would be 518, so the candidate would need 260.
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This is an entirely unsettled question. When the The Electoral Count Act of 1887 that established the process for Congress to reject electoral votes was passed there were mixed opinions and assumptions about how it would affect the count of the number of appointed electors. The question has never been resolved.

There has never been a case where it would make a difference.

Electoral votes have been rejected for a number of reasons. Votes from a Confederate state were rejected because the state had not taken the necessary actions to regain its privileges, indicated that the appointment of the electors was rejected. In another case, votes were rejected, in part, because they were submitted with an improper seal, indicating that the electors were appointed, but their votes were not valid. Other times votes have been rejected due to fraudulent elections, in which case it is uncertain whether it is the appointment of the electors or the votes of the electors that are being rejected.

In addition, sometimes electors do not vote due to illness, absence, or death. It is uncertain whether they count in the whole number or not.

Historically, the way the whole number of appointed electors has been recorded is all over the place. Sometimes electors with rejected and/or unsubmitted votes have been counted in the total and sometimes not.

In one election, Congress rejected the votes from one state. There were also three electors who died before casting a vote. In Congress, the number of appointed electors exclude the rejected votes and the three electors, but the resulted published by NARA excluded the votes rejected by Congress but included the three deceased electors in the total.

If it should become an issue, it is not even clear who would have the authority to make the final determination of what the whole number of appointed electors is.

Here is a nice write up of the process of counting electoral votes, including a link to a paper by the Congressional Research Service that includes a historical review:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-res...on-part-2-how-congress-counts-electoral-votes
 
Resume said:
Maybe we could give Mexico Texas in exchange for their completing the wall . . . around Texas, and a vow to never let their residents emigrate, or even visit, the U.S. again. Except for Austin and environs, including their BBQ of course; we keep them.
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Sure, that could work. It worked for decades with cold war era Berlin. They can build a wall around Austin with a corridor to, say, Oklahoma.
 
I read in Wikipedia that most state attorney generals are elected by popular vote. So the reason why they are signing up on this is because they're afraid to lose the support of Trumplican voters in their next elections?
 
It appears there is no shortage of nut job lawyers willing to take up Trump's cause. John C. Eastman, attorney has authored Trump's wish to join the TX AG's SCOTUS lawsuit.

He's the author of the Newsweek op ed claiming Harris is not a US citizen.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
When you go too far for even right-wing commentators: Someone put up a website doxxing members of the GOP for assassination for not going along with the narrative that Trump won the election, and when the site was taken down immediately started circulating the information on alt-right websites

The man posting that story is himself very right-wing. Judging by the comments section, he seems to be losing his audience, though, for not being rabid enough.
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I do hope the FBI will track this mentally ill person down.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
It appears there is no shortage of nut job lawyers willing to take up Trump's cause. John C. Eastman, attorney has authored Trump's wish to join the TX AG's SCOTUS lawsuit.

He's the author of the Newsweek op ed claiming Harris is not a US citizen.
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Actually, Eastman did not "author" the support document. It was ghostwritten by one of the Texas lawyers and Eastman put his name on it.
 
I'm not worried about Trump's coup attempts but his cult is seriously worrisome. Granted that assassination threat is the worst of it, but this is seriously worrisome as well:

PBS: Texas-led election lawsuit becomes conservative litmus test
The Texas lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory has quickly become a conservative litmus test, with many Republicans signing onto the case even as some have predicted it will fail.

The last-gasp bid to subvert the results of the Nov. 3 election is the latest demonstration of President Donald Trump’s enduring political power even as his term is set to end. ...

“The Supreme Court is not going to overturn the election in the Texas case, as the President has told them to do,” tweeted tweeted Rick Hasen, an election law expert and a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “But we are in bad shape as a country that 17 states could support this shameful, anti-American filing” by Texas and its attorney general, Ken Paxton. ...

Trump has acted to join the case, tweeting Thursday that “the Supreme Court has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States.” Hours later, Trump held a meeting at the White House, scheduled before the suit was filed, with a dozen Republican attorneys general, including Paxton and several others who are backing the effort. ...
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So who paid for that dozen AGs' trips to the White House? And no doubt some if not all of them traveled from states that have travel bans in place. This after a slew of state legislators appear to have been infected by Giuliani.

Of course then there is this:
Many of the attorneys general supporting the case have shown greater political ambitions.
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I believe that was mentioned upthread.

And of course this is adding fuel to Trump's fire and his going over the edge every time his BS claim he will get a second term doesn't die. Makes one wonder who is using who here.

The article notes Trump is Tweet-storming about the 'stolen' election.
 
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