RMF5630 said:
Porteroso said:
whiterock said:
Sam Lowry said:
4th and Inches said:
xxx yyy said:
RMF5630 said:
whiterock said:
4th and Inches said:
Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:
Once the Electoral College has met and every state's election has been certified, there is no constitutional provision for an "alternate slate" of electors. A group of people who gather in a room and claim they are electors, as state-party-backed Republicans did in a few states on Monday, have no more authority than if the people reading this article decided that they, too, wanted to be members of the Electoral College.
So while Republicans in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan followed the White House's lead, making or discussing moves to form their own competing slates of pro-Trump electors, it was a theatrical effort with no legal pathway. Electoral College slates are tied to the winner of the popular vote in each state, and all five of those states have certified their results in favor of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The most the Republicans could do was claim a symbolic moment, saying that the people who showed up would have been the slates of electors had President Trump won those states. But since he lost them, and numerous state and federal courts have rejected his and his allies' baseless claims of voting fraud, these groups have no actual significance.
Is this correct?
it is an opinion. Other legal and constitutional scholars disagree with it.
Those people were in fact electors chosen by the state to represent Donald Trump just like the others that were the electors chosen by the state to represent Joe Biden. They are not the same as you and I the reader sending a note to washington. What they did was not illegal and ultimately had no bearing on the process beyand doing what needed to be done at the time. Both sets being sent is not an issue and is in fact necessary if the state is in question and the results could change. They would be thrown out at the fed level reading because they are not certified by the state and they were..
If they were not sent and the state changed its mind, that could get messy as well since the rules state electors have to be submitted by a certain date.
The states stood firm, the non certified elector sets were discarded as written in the proceedure and Biden is president.
Now, if we want to talk about all the states that certified elections that used rules other than those passed by the state legislature as required by federal election law. That would be fun. We are seeing them slowly being Unwound and hopefully going forward, they will be codified by the legislature or people will fight to make sure only the state legislature rules are used.
In a scenario where, say, the PA slate certified by the PA executive branch were rejected by Congress, one possible remedy would be for the PA legislature to exercise powers explicitly implied in the Constitution to ratify a new slate, which in this particular scenario would almost certainly be the extant (aka "alternate") GOP slate of electors.
So "alternate slates" of electors are real. They exist. Whether the PA legislative branch could take action to substitute them for the slate of electors certified by PA executive is an open question that does not require "insurrection" to resolve.
As I said, I view this as political strategy, not criminal proceedings. Especially since the VP didn't accept the alternate electors. One more strategy that was floated and not executed. As with every strategy, some like it. Some don't. Obviously, the VP (whose decision it was) did not feel comfortable and certified. I still see nothing wrong. NOW, if Trump created forged documents that were falsely signed and he directed it, than you may have an issue. But if everyone that signed thought it was a legit path and took part, I don't see how there is a criminal culpability.
The problem I have with the "false electors" is the efforts to promote them run against the very basis of our representative government and the Constitution. When a state certifies an election, it recognizes the "winning" electors who represent the will of the people of that state. Losing electors have no standing as they do not represent the will of the people as shown in the certified election.
The Election Counting Act of 1887 prohibits
Making or use of "any false writing or document" in the implementation of this procedure is a felony punishable by 5 years imprisonment by 18 U.S. Code 1001 under Chapter 47 Fraud and False Statements.
Promoting a slate of false electors--in defiance of the State's Governor-- could be construed as such a false writing, imo.
they would be false documents if they were presented as the elector slate certified by the state.. were they?
Two states made them contingent on certification, while the remainder did not. How they're presented in debate depends on which stage of the operation Trump's supporters are trying to justify. At the state level, they would have you believe the documents were only meant to take effect if the states concluded that the original certifications were erroneous. Therefore, they argue, the documents were submitted in good faith. Of course the states concluded the opposite, which means the alternative documents were irrelevant. At the federal level, Trump and his lawyer ignored this fact and argued that "7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors to the President of the Senate." In other words, now we're supposed to treat the documents as if they were certified. This is the only way to invoke Pence's authority to either decide which votes to count, have the House decide through a vote, or put it to a vote in the joint session, which would result in a stalemate and throw the issue back to the state legislatures.
The last of these three strategies was considered the most workable, and it's the one that Whiterock advocated above. The fact that the state legislatures' authority is uncertain in this area is the least of its flaws. Most obviously, the vice president has no authority to unilaterally reject votes. Otherwise no election would ever be safe. To get the issue back to the state legislatures, you first have to ignore the Electoral Count Act's provision that the votes "regularly given by the electors" are the ones that must be counted. Then you have to ignore the ECA's provision that, in case of disagreement between the two houses, the votes under the seal of the governor must be counted. Finally, you have to ignore the ECA's time limit, which only allows two hours for the joint session to decide on objections.
So to go back to your original question, Trumpists are necessarily vague as to whether the "alternate" slates were presented as official. They have to slither between two positions in order to avoid fraud on the one hand and failure on the other. And even with the certificates in hand, there was no legitimate path to victory.
no one, here or elsewhere, has said they were official. rather the opposite. indeed, the language of "alternate" explicitly ratifies and supports the concept of "official." Political conventions afford a seamless analogy: An alternate delegate to a political convention is elected IN CASE they are needed, in case an official delegate fails to show, in case an official delegate fails (for whatever reason) to be credentialed. That alternate delegate is real, was elected as such. And, more to the point, the existence of that alternate delegate does not impugn the official delegates, the official proceedings, or the convention (credentialing, caucusing, voting) itself.
Two slates of electors were elected by the voters in each of the 50 states. One was certified by executive action (based on state legislative statute authorized by Federal Constitution) as "official." Turning to the "alternate" slate should the "official" slate fail to be credentialed by Congress is an appropriate consideration to take, completely respectful of elections. of voters. of traditions. of democracy. One must either use them or go back to the respective state legislators for a solution, or simply not have the voters of that state participate in the EV process.
It is the neverTrumpers who are creating all the stress here, using misinformation to depict every constituent piece of the legal process that Trump used to contest the election as insurrection.
Disgusting. Porteroso's post above is far more destructive of social contract than anything Trump did. Why, we cannot disagree with him without being insurrectionists.
There is no legal way for the President to throw out the vote of the people and be dictator. You are so adamant that your demigod leader of glory be guiltless, you are trying to claim that bullying the Vice President, or the state government of Georgia, into throwing out certified vote tallies is legal. Show me how that works in your social contract. I don't believe the founding fathers gave a sitting President the power to continue in office in opposition to the vote of the people, but they did give you the right to blow xsmoke out the dirty end, which you are fully exercising, to your credit.
You are jumping around here. First, the President can voice what he wanted to occur to the VP on the certification of electors. There is nothing in the Constitution or law forbidding him from making comments or offering his opinions. Also, Pence certified so obviously when Pence did his due diligence he didn't agree. Pretty much end of story.
As for GA State Governor comment, It was obviously not a literal order to do anything, simply a comment that he needed to find X number of votes to win. This is all political theater, hence the timing.
Telling people to find votes so he can win is not new, but it is unAmerican. I'm sure that's what Putin tells his lackeys.
If you read my post a little ways up, I admit that the Jan 6 hearings won't result in much, but I simply think it is necessary to combat this brand of anti-democracy politics Trump and his zealots are engaging in, even if it's largely symbolic.
Trump did not commit any felony I know of by asking Pence to throw out the will of the people, because you're right, it's just comments and opinions he was offering up. It's disgusting all the same, and had the founding fathers known we'd have sitting Presidents exploring their dictatorial options through comments and opinions, it might have been a felony.
These are important comments and opinions to combat, even if, again, the combat is mostly symbolic. I believe in America the way the founding fathers intended it, for the most part, unlike the zealots here.
