Reports suggest strategy to bypass results in key states under discussion, but legal experts say such an effort is likely to fail
www.theguardian.com
Republicans are reportedly considering the possibility of asking state legislatures to ignore the will of the popular vote and appoint electors favorable to the president. Trump also declined to say whether he would accept a peaceful transfer of power this week, comments that many Republicans distanced themselves from. Trump said he needs to put a new supreme court justice in place to resolve election disputes.
The US constitution gives state legislatures the authority to appoint the 538 electors to the electoral college who ultimately elect the president. States have long used the winner of the popular vote to determine who gets the electoral votes in their states, but Republicans anonymously told the Atlantic the campaign has discussed the possibility of using delays in the vote count as a basis to ask Republican-controlled legislatures to appoint their own electors, regardless of the final vote tally.
The chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party acknowledged he has discussed appointing loyal electors with the Trump campaign.
www.forbes.com
A jarring new report from The Atlantic claims that the Trump campaign is discussing potential strategies to circumvent the results of the 2020 election, should Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump, by first alleging the existence of rampant fraud and then asking legislators in battleground states where the Republicans have a legislative majority to bypass the state’s popular vote and instead to choose electors loyal to the GOP and the sitting president.
The head of the state Republican Party raised the possibility that the GOP-controlled legislature could choose a slate of presidential electors to cast the state’s votes for Donald Trump.
www.inquirer.com
It is the nightmare scenario Pennsylvania election officials have fretted over for months: a knockdown, drag-out fight over which presidential candidate will win the state and snag its coveted electoral votes.
Now, the head of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania has fueled fears of chaos after Election Day, raising the specter that his party could break with tradition and allow the GOP-controlled legislature to choose a slate of presidential electors to cast the state’s votes for Donald Trump even if the president doesn’t win the popular vote.
In comments to the Atlantic made public this week, state Republican Chairman Lawrence Tabas suggested that he had spoken with Trump campaign officials about the possibility of bypassing the results of the popular vote should there be uncertainty or disputes over the validity of ballots cast. The U.S. Constitution, Tabas said, allows state legislatures to choose presidential electors.
How Republican-controlled state legislatures could be used to circumvent the results of the election and ensure a Trump victory.
www.vanityfair.com
Now the Trump campaign is said to be considering another, even more outrageous approach: In a thorough and deeply disconcerting piece about the constitutional crisis that may await us between November 3 and the inauguration in January, the Atlantic’s Barton Gellman reports that the Trump campaign has been discussing “contingency plans to bypass the election results and appoint local electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” Citing the president’s baseless claims of fraud, Team Trump could ask GOP-controlled state governments to choose electors, completely ignoring an unfavorable or uncertain popular vote, state and national Republican sources told Gellman.
“The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power,’” a Trump campaign legal adviser explained to the Atlantic. “‘We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state.’”
Does completely ignoring the will of the voters seem anti-democratic? Unconstitutional? Impossible? One would think. But as Gellman points out, however authoritarian this kind of end-around may seem, the Constitution doesn’t forbid such a move, and it’s something the Trump campaign could pull off. Indeed, state Republican leaders have already casually indicated that they’d be all too happy to enable this kind of power grab. “I’ve mentioned it to them, and I hope they’re thinking about it too,” Lawrence Tabas, chairman of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, one of the swing states on which the 2020 race could hinge, told Gellman. “It is one of the available legal options set forth in the constitution.”
Disturbing as the prospect of bypassing the popular vote in GOP-controlled battlegrounds may be, it’s but one of several vulnerabilities in the electoral system Trump and his flunkies are trying to exploit this fall, ranging from complex legal fights to declaring absentee ballots fraudulent before they’ve even been processed to the possibility — likelihood? — that the president will simply pronounce himself the winner before all votes are tallied. While Joe Biden and the Democrats are sounding increasingly loud alarms, it remains frustratingly unclear what they can do to prevent the country from plummeting into this looming crisis. A quick and overwhelming Biden victory would certainly help matters, but it's a tough proposition: While the Democrat retains a strong lead over his counterpart nationally, polls suggest the two are locked in tight races in several key states like Georgia, Iowa, Florida, and Arizona. The idea that typically deep-red states like Texas and Georgia are in play for Biden would seem to reflect the president’s challenging reelection prospects—but those states all are controlled by Republican-majority legislatures, creating just the opening Trump needs to call the votes bogus and appoint electors that will decide in his favor.
This is a dire scenario, and one that could be upon us in a little over a month.
Sources told The Atlantic that the Trump campaign was planning to install loyal electors in swing states with Republican-led legislatures.
www.businessinsider.com
This is not the first time the prospect of state legislatures ignoring the popular vote and appointing their own slate of electors has arisen.
theconversation.com
Liberals are just so ******* ignorant and stupid as a bag of rocks.
If this ignoring of the courts courts and blatant voter fraud is not fixed one way or another, there will be no other choice than for Patriots to revolt, a hard long revolt.
But these Marxist bastards MUST BE STOPPED ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
WE will NOT become Venezuela.