Trump's Coup d'état.

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Shouldn't the fact we are a Republic mean states can't sue other states because they don't like the election results.
 
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.

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.
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This is how I read it too.
 
Ulf Nereng said:
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?
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Yep.
 
No Other said:
We live in Constitutional Federal Republic NOT a Democracy. The difference between the two are enormous.
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We live in a Constitutional Republic where our leaders are democratically chosen.

So let's not pretend that we don't by playing semantics.
 
Paul2 said:
What the **** was Raskin thinking?! He should have this down, certainly far better than any of us.
Yes. From Article II:



I'm not aware of these specific reasons. Where are they listed?
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"Specific reasons" is pretty vague. I don't like who they voted for is a "specific reason".
 
Paul2 said:
3 USC 15 only says (on this issue):


What is a good or acceptable reason or not is not specified. Which means any cockamamie reason is fine. Just make sure your grammar is good.
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The relevant clause is this:

; and no electoral vote or votes from any State which shall have been regularly given by electors whose appointment has been lawfully certified to according to section 6 of this title from which but one return has been received shall be rejected, but the two Houses concurrently may reject the vote or votes when they agree that such vote or votes have not been so regularly given by electors whose appointment has been so certified.
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So, if the electors have been "lawfully certified", and only one set of electors has been received from the state, the electoral vote cannot be rejected.

Devil's Advocate wrote a good post noting that none of this is really tested ground as far as court precedents go. I was unaware that any electors had ever been rejected by Congress. The only cases I had read about were attempts to reject ballots of faithless electors, or of cases where someone objected rather obviously for the purpose of grabbing an opportunity to make a speech. All those attempts were unsuccessful, i.e. the votes were counted, according to the article, but Devil's Advocate said it had been done.

ETA: I did some quick looking again, and I did not find a case where electors had ever been rejected by Congress under this law. I saw cases where objections had been raised, but never a case when those objections were sustained by Congress.
 
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OK, so back to the Texas vs WiGaMiPa lawsuit at the Supreme Court

Now, the states of "New California" and "New Nevada" have filed amici briefs in support of the suit.

Wait - what states are those? They are apparently people (not elected representatives or authorized in any way) from California and Nevada who don't like the fact that CA and NV haven't signed onto the lawsuit and so they made up their own "state" to participate.

These are actual lawyers who have done this.

In other news, Texas responded to the WiGaMiPa response. They accused the defendants of not taking their lawsuit seriously.

And it's a fair point. That's because it's not serious. The governor of Montana pointed that out. The morons from "New California" and "New Nevada" prove that not only is it not serious, it's making a mockery of the court.

The USSC needs to STOMP hard on this crap.
 
Meadmaker said:
The relevant clause is this:



So, if the electors have been "lawfully certified", and only one set of electors has been received from the state, the electoral vote cannot be rejected.

Devil's Advocate wrote a good post noting that none of this is really tested ground as far as court precedents go. I was unaware that any electors had ever been rejected by Congress. The only cases I had read about were attempts to reject ballots of faithless electors, or of cases where someone objected rather obviously for the purpose of grabbing an opportunity to make a speech. All those attempts were unsuccessful, i.e. the votes were counted, according to the article, but Devil's Advocate said it had been done.

ETA: I did some quick looking again, and I did not find a case where electors had ever been rejected by Congress under this law. I saw cases where objections had been raised, but never a case when those objections were sustained by Congress.
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Do you know what "regularly given" means in this context?
 
Meadmaker said:
The relevant clause is this:



So, if the electors have been "lawfully certified", and only one set of electors has been received from the state, the electoral vote cannot be rejected.

Devil's Advocate wrote a good post noting that none of this is really tested ground as far as court precedents go. I was unaware that any electors had ever been rejected by Congress. The only cases I had read about were attempts to reject ballots of faithless electors, or of cases where someone objected rather obviously for the purpose of grabbing an opportunity to make a speech. All those attempts were unsuccessful, i.e. the votes were counted, according to the article, but Devil's Advocate said it had been done.

ETA: I did some quick looking again, and I did not find a case where electors had ever been rejected by Congress under this law. I saw cases where objections had been raised, but never a case when those objections were sustained by Congress.
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I just finished reading the linked article that Devil's Advocate posted. It was excellent.

I must admit that this demonstrates kind of the absurdity of following all of these arcane rules written in the 18th century. They made perfect sense in 1789 but this process makes NONE today. The holes in it invite mischief.
 
Recent commentary from the folks as the Dispatch, a "definitely not never Trump" but pretty much a never trump conservative source is that the TX AG might be angling for a pardon and the rest of the bandwagon knows it won't go anywhere so they don't have to worry about the negative consequences of jumping on.

Though the Dispatch would never question anyone's motives.
 
pgwenthold said:
OK, so back to the Texas vs WiGaMiPa lawsuit at the Supreme Court

Now, the states of "New California" and "New Nevada" have filed amici briefs in support of the suit.

Wait - what states are those? They are apparently people (not elected representatives or authorized in any way) from California and Nevada who don't like the fact that CA and NV haven't signed onto the lawsuit and so they made up their own "state" to participate.

These are actual lawyers who have done this.

In other news, Texas responded to the WiGaMiPa response. They accused the defendants of not taking their lawsuit seriously.

And it's a fair point. That's because it's not serious. The governor of Montana pointed that out. The morons from "New California" and "New Nevada" prove that not only is it not serious, it's making a mockery of the court.

The USSC needs to STOMP hard on this crap.
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They could also just ignore it. It's Friday. All 50 States and DC have certified their electoral slate of voters. The EC convenes on MONDAY.
 
Paul2 said:
Do you know what "regularly given" means in this context?
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Nope.

If the Supreme Court ever got a case on it, they would probably go to the Congressional Record for 1887, or whenever it was, and see if that, or the other terms used, was clarified in any of the speeches or material put forward in support of the legislation.
 
ahhell said:
Recent commentary from the folks as the Dispatch, a "definitely not never Trump" but pretty much a never trump conservative source is that the TX AG might be angling for a pardon and the rest of the bandwagon knows it won't go anywhere so they don't have to worry about the negative consequences of jumping on.

Though the Dispatch would never question anyone's motives.
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Now it's at over 60% of House Republicans supporting and putting their name to this nonsense.
https://twitter.com/johnkruzel/status/1337467262907928577
 
acbytesla said:
They could also just ignore it. It's Friday. All 50 States and DC have certified their electoral slate of voters. The EC convenes on MONDAY.
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I don't think they will ignore it, nor do I think they should. This should be laid to rest before Monday.
 
acbytesla said:
I just finished reading the linked article that Devil's Advocate posted. It was excellent.

I must admit that this demonstrates kind of the absurdity of following all of these arcane rules written in the 18th century. They made perfect sense in 1789 but this process makes NONE today. The holes in it invite mischief.
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I read the article.

The examples where Congress refused to accept electoral votes were very few, and all of them occurred before passage of the statute of 1887 was passed. Since that law has been on the federal books, no objection has ever been sustained.
 
cosmicaug said:
Now it's at over 60% of House Republicans supporting and putting their name to this nonsense.
https://twitter.com/johnkruzel/status/1337467262907928577
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This should have consequences.

I say they should have to put their careers on the line with Trump's. If when the smoke clears he's not President, they don't get to keep their offices with them. When the King is usurped the Praetorian Guard doesn't stay to serve the new King, and none of the members of Congress are Barristan Selmy enough to deserve an exception that rule.

Make them put their money where their mouth is.
 
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