The Coming Electoral College Hullabaloo
On January 6th, you can expect tumult. For the 2020 election, it will come to naught. But it will be the rip of the lasting schism in the Republican Party.
At the pro-Trump MAGA March in Washington on December 12, protestors chanted “Destroy the GOP! Destroy the GOP!”. Pro-Trumpists in the streets are angry that GOP regulars have failed to turn the legally recognized outcome of a Biden/Harris victory, into a victory for the soon-to-be-former-President. They intend to use the January 6th Joint Session of Congress, where the Electoral College votes will be counted, bringing an end to the Constitutional process of electing the president, in their quest to “destroy” the GOP.
The coming January 6th hullabaloo will seem to threaten the Biden/Harris election - but really, it won’t. It will be completely about Trump securing power over the Republican Party going forward, and not about the election results, which will be finalized with Biden/Harris as the winner.
This process is governed under the Electoral Count Act of 1877 and its codification under Title 3 Section 6 of the US Code.
Yesterday (December 14), US states completed the process of certifying their Electoral College votes. At least 6 days prior, each Governor had produced 7 certificates, listing the Electors by name, those selected by their state’s November election and certified by their Secretaries of State; one certificate went to the US Archive in Washington DC, and the other 6 to the Electoral College in their state, itself. These certify who the members of the Electoral College are — and that, only. When the Joint Session of Congress counts votes by the slate of electors, there will be no doubt as to what slate of Electors was appointed by the state’s Presidential election process.
Yesterday, these Electoral Colleges all voted, produced six copies of their votes, and affixed them with the six Governor’s certificates. These are then sent to the President of the US Senate - always, the Vice President, so this year, to Mike Pence.
On January 6, Pence will preside over the opening of these certificates in front of a Joint Session of Congress — the House and the Senate, sat together — their being read aloud, and then tallying the number of Electoral College votes, to determine the winner by a majority of votes.
In a normal election year, that might be all one might need to know about the process.
But this year, ways to contest this process are being exploited to their fullest by the Trumpist Republicans.
During the January 6 Joint Session, a Congressperson can contest a state's Governor-certified Electoral College votes, in preference to an alternate slate of Electors. To do, they wait until that state’s Electoral College votes are to be read, they rise and be recognized by the Vice President (acting in his capacity as President of the Senate, and of the Joint Session), and then they annunciate an objection, requiring:
* a substantive objection, in writing
* signed by one US House member
* and signed by one US Senate member
Given their penchant for disrupting the Presidential election process using every available tool, this objection process will probably occur multiple times, for every swing state which went for Biden - GA, PA, MI, WI, NV, AZ - at the behest of some Trumpist GOP House member, signed by either Senator Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Rand Paul (R-TN) or some other Trump-supporting senator.
This will come up, because the unelected and therefore legally illegitimate people who would have been GOP electors in several swing states did sit yesterday and vote for their candidate of choice - Trump - intending to forward a certificate, not recognized by their states’ Governors, to the Vice President for counting during the January 6th Joint Session. This is “a competing slate”.
When this happens, the Electoral Count Act requires that the House and Senate withdraw to their separate chambers, and debate the objection for no more than 2 hours. For the objection to be sustained, *both* the House and the Senate must each vote for it.
The Democratic-majority House will never vote to overturn Biden's votes. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that the Republican-majority Senate would vote to overturn the Governor-certified slate of electors. So this process will not change the outcome of the election. It will, however, add at least 10 hours to an already lengthy day-long process, and likely will extend the Joint Session over multiple days.
More politically significantly, what it will do, is require each Republican Senator to go on public record on the legally unjustified throwing out of the election for each of the major swing states. They'll have to do this for each of the states, 2 hours of debate each time, and then the vote - which will always be majority against Trump.
Think about the crowds of pro-Trump protestors, chanting “Destroy the GOP!” Those Republican US Senators who stand in opposition to the illegal GOP elector slates on January 6th are the target of their ire.
The entire point of that objection process will be to display which GOP Senators unquestioningly support Donald Trump, and which support the Constitutional processes -- much like the recent Texas Election Case in which 126 of 196 House GOP members (but not a single us Senator!) supported via amicus brief to the SCOTUS.
It’s about GOP intra-party politics - it will part of Trump's Republican party takeover, and will be a clarion blow in the schism of the Republican Party, predicted to occur over decades now.
So you can bet your ass I'm watching that shit on CSPAN.
References:
* Olorunnipa, Toluse and Wootson, Cleve R. (Jr), In challenging election defeat, Trump cements his control over the Republican Party, Washington Post, accessed Dec 13 2020.
* Fandos, Nicholas and Schmidt, Michael S., Trump Allies Eye Long-Shot Election Reversal in Congress, Testing Pence, New York Times, accessed Dec 13 2020.
* Bernstein, Brittany. Electors Meet to Finalize 2020 Vote, amid Post-Election Turmoil. National Review, accessed Dec 15 2020.