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Trump's Coup d'état.

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As near as I can tell reviewing the challenge of the EC votes on Jan 6th there's not a chance in hell it will overturn the election. After a challenge from one member from each House, the House would need to vote to agree. That ain't gonna happen. At most there will be one or even a couple of Senators to go along with the challenge, but from there both the Senate and the House would each have to vote to reject the EC certified votes.

I do hope these idiots don't try to challenge these votes state by state. It might turn out like a days-long cricket game. :p

I found two interesting things rooting around looking up the rules.

That idiot AG from TX also tried to get the earlier stimulus bill stopped from going to effect in one county in a failed bid to stop mail-in ballots. TX needed the money to fund sending absentee ballots to people. That's the GOP for you, cheating any which way they can.

The other interesting thing I found from the "who knew" column is that the EC certification was challenged in the 2004 election because Ohio's voting was hinky. I posted that yesterday somewhere because the Diebold voting machines and Ken Blackburn did suspicious things.

Democrats challenge Ohio electoral votes - Move delays official certification of presidential election

Who paid attention to that back then except people more directly involved.

I paid attention up until the election. But this stuff was off my radar screen.
The move was not designed to overturn the re-election of President Bush, said Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who filed the objection.

The objecting Democrats, most of whom are House members, said they wanted to draw attention to the need for aggressive election reform in the wake of what they said were widespread voter problems.

In a letter to congressional leaders Wednesday, members of the group said they would take the action because a new report by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found "numerous, serious election irregularities," particularly in Ohio, that led to "a significant disenfranchisement of voters."

"How can we possibly tell millions of Americans who registered to vote, who came to the polls in record numbers, particularly our young people ... to simply get over it and move on?" Tubbs Jones told reporters.
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acbytesla said:
Trump is calling for every one to do what he wants. Some are humoring him and some might be serious. But his allies in Congress fought tooth and nail to keep the stimulus payments tiny. And just today Trump demanded they be $2,000 a citizen. Three times the $600 that the GOP forced though. Trump wants the public on his side.
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Or he wants people to rue the day they threw him out.

I imagine there are a lot of things influencing Trump's decision to whine about the Bills he is supposed to sign.

1) He wants to dominate the news cycle.

2) He wants to get even with the GOP Senators who clearly are not behind his desire to overturn the election.

3) He wants McConnell to call him and grovel.

4) He wants to look like the Almighty even though he really looks like a mighty dick.

5) He may indeed want his base to have more material to say, see, Trump was a good POTUS.

6) He does imagine himself a 'for the people' kind of guy. This fits with his imaginary view of himself.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Or he wants people to rue the day they threw him out.

I imagine there are a lot of things influencing Trump's decision to whine about the Bills he is supposed to sign.

1) He wants to dominate the news cycle.

2) He wants to get even with the GOP Senators who clearly are not behind his desire to overturn the election.

3) He wants McConnell to call him and grovel.

4) He wants to look like the Almighty even though he really looks like a mighty dick.

5) He may indeed want his base to have more material to say, see, Trump was a good POTUS.

6) He does imagine himself a 'for the people' kind of guy. This fits with his imaginary view of himself.
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It's all about Donny, just concentrate on the Donny. So any options that keep eyeballs and clicks on him.
 
Mc Connell might end up being Trump's White Whale.
The only one who got from Trump what he wanted without giving up anything he cared for.
The only one not negatively affected by dealing with the Donald.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Wouldn't that mean that the vote would more or less automatically be defeated, either because all the votes counted would be against it or because the Senate wouldn't have a quorum?

Dave
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A quorum only requires that there be a certain number of Senators present when there is a call for a vote. It doesn't matter how many abstain. They could all abstain, which would mean the measure is not passed (or in this case the objection to the vote count is not sustained).

I would not be surprised if a number of Republicans abstained or that they suddenly find that they just can't make it to the joint session that day.
 
Tero said:
But there is no interest in Senate. Can Mitch prevent a floor vote? If he has headcounts and it will not pass.
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No. This goes to a vote. It is not a scheduling issue. Its more like the articles of impeachment. The Senate has to deal with it. Mitch has no power to prevent a vote.
 
acbytesla said:
It takes 1 Congressman and 1 Senator to object to a State's slate of electors. They also must have a legitimate reason to object.
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They don't really have to have a legitimate reason to object. Members of Congress are not allowed to make statements during the joint session. Any objections must be submitted in writing without argument. That means that they can't submitted a 500 page objection. The objection would just be that the votes were not regularly made.

Once they split into the House and Senate, then they can make their arguments and submit whatever documents they want into the record.
 
Yalius said:
Can they object to each individual elector and get 2 hours debate for all 538 electors?
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Probably not. Congress does not get individual votes from each elector. They get a certificate singed by the electors that says what their total votes are. It does not list how each elector voted.

But there have been objections to a single vote in the case of a faithless elector. It is theoretically possible that one pair of Representative and Senator object to only one elector while another pair object only to a different elector. It is not clear whether they have 2 hours to vote on all objections or if they take them one at a time with 2 hours for each. There might be some rules of Congress that dictate that, but I'm not sure. It would probably be up to Pence.

If they simply want to delay the count to try to push it past inauguration day they probably could. They could object to ever state. Trump will lose, so putting Trumps votes at risk would not be an issue if their only intention is to delay. It would take up to 102 hours of debate. Plus moving back and forth between the individual sessions and the joint session.

They could do daily recesses, but no recess is allowed 5 days after the count begins. I think they would need a majority vote in the Senate to recess the Senate.

They could further delay by constantly raising points of order during the joint session.

A group of Republicans could walk out of the joint session so that there isn't a quorum. That has been tried before. In that case, the President of the Senate (Vice President) declared that the session could not recess and just resumed the count.

The count is done by 4 tellers consisting of a Representative and Senator for each party. A Republican teller could intentionally by mistake read a state's votes as being for Trump/Pence instead of Biden/Harris in order to force Democrats to object and hope that the Senate won't sustain the objection.

There probably will be all sorts of shenanigans and tomfoolery on January 6.
 
acbytesla said:
Maybe. A roll call vote is required if 1/5th the number of members present demand one. So if there are 100 Senators present it requires 20 Senators to force a roll call vote.
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I'm not sure if a voice vote is allowed in this case or not. I think in all cases in the past it has been a rollcall vote without any call for a rollcall vote. That may just be the way it is done.

The only expectation that I am aware of was in 1960 when Hawaii submitted two slates of electors (one from the Secretary of State as acting Governor and one from the Governor). The votes from Hawaii wouldn't change the outcome. Everybody knew that the slate from the Secretary of State for Nixon was not legitimate and Nixon had already conceded. Nixon was the Vice President and just wanted to move on with it. Stipulating that it was not intended to establish a precedent, he asked for a unanimous voice vote to just accept the certificate from the Governor, which is what happened.
 
Horatius said:
Is there a fixed order in which the states are processed?
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By law the votes are counted for each state in alphabetical order starting with the letter A (3 USC 15).

ETA: The exception to this was in 1960 when the official certificate issued by the Governor of Hawaii was not received in Congress until after the count had already started. Nixon skipped Hawaii until the end without any objection.
 
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Delvo said:
Even if Congress did vote against confirming the election, it would change nothing. Their confirmation is like the losing candidate's concession: a tradition with no effect on real-world results. The person who got elected still got elected whether they confirm it or not.
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It is not established who was elected until the votes are counted. Congress counts the votes. Until there is an official vote count, we don't have an official count of the votes to determine who won.

We all know who the electors voted for. But somebody has to do the actual official count.
 
That's already been done at the Electoral College. It doesn't need to be done again. All Congress can do is agree with it or object, and an objection is just a request for the states to recheck their certifications, and the states' answer is already known anyway. All that Congress is doing is just one of those "resolutions", where they say they like something or don't like something.
 
I guess a memo was sent out to the White House staff acknowledging the transition (payroll stuff, etc.) which was followed by another memo instructing folk to ignore the previous memo.
 
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