WTF? A Republican controlled House in 2024 can overturn a legitimate Electoral College result?

[XacerbatedDem]

The Card a Republican House Can Play That Turns Us Into a House of Cards: Newsweek

We wrote a column early in 2020 describing how Donald Trump would attempt to steal the election by using Congress to overturn the legitimate Electoral College results. Unfortunately, the piece ended up being incredibly prescient over time, as we learned more details over the last several months.

A lot of media coverage in the last 18 months since the election have focused on both how former President Trump schemed to overturn the election results, and congressional efforts to create stronger federal voting protections. What the media has not yet surfaced is that because of the 12th Amendment to the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, if a Republican controlled House of Representatives in 2024 wants to overturn a legitimate Electoral College result, there is a path to their doing so that no contemplated fix to the Electoral Count Act is likely to prevent.

To understand how this could happen one needs to appreciate how a Republican controlled House under a Speaker Kevin McCarthy (or maybe Jim Jordan) full-throated Big Lie cheerleaders, could upend a legitimate Electoral College victory by the 2024 Democratic candidate. The law provides a path for overturning a legitimate Electoral College result even though doing so would be enormously undemocratic.

Under the existing presidential selection process, if a single House member and a single senator object to the certification of a state's Electoral College delegation, when a competing slate of electors has been transmitted to Congress in a timely manner, the House and Senate are to retreat to their respective chambers and vote on which slate of electors to certify or not. Regardless of whether the Senate is in Democratic or Republican hands, if the House and Senate disagree in their respective consideration of which slate ought to be recognized as the rightful slate of state electors, that disagreement regarding electors from a handful of swing states would likely result in no candidate being able to achieve an Electoral College vote count of at least 270 electors. Under the Constitution, the election would then fall to the House of Representatives to decide the presidency.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-card-a-republican-house-can-play-that-turns-us-into-a-house-of-cards-opinion/ar-AAWPuKA?ocid=HPCOMMDHP15&cvid=1e4184023eca4b54a9630bf5d966096e

I hope this is BS!

[hlthe2b]

1. I think they mean to underscore that protective election reforms can not be passed under a highly

RW-controlled Congress so that any attempts Dems might make to counter the state-based voter suppression and voter count corruptive laws would be impossible, thereby all but handing the 2024 Presidential election to Trump if he goes for it.

[XacerbatedDem]

4. It's an opinion piece, but they go on to say that:

"So, to throw the presidential election into the House of Representatives where the Republican candidate can be anointed as president would in all likelihood mean, as it looks now, that Donald Trump would become president again. Alternatively, if the congressional Electoral College certification process for president and vice president was deadlocked for some reason and did not get resolved before Jan. 20, Kevin McCarthy, as the person presumed to be speaker at that time, would become acting president of the United States."

OMG! And if McCarthy is out and Gym Jordan is the Speaker, then he could become president. Geez.

[obamanut2012]

2. This is nothing new

[enough]

3. What could be new is the willingness of one party to make it happen. NT

[Celerity]

12. that is probably the single most important, effective short reply I've seen in months, if not longer

[Thunderbeast]

19. +1

[Emile]

6. Never fear the DOJ would never allow anything like that to happen.

SARCASM

[Hotler]

18. .....

[uponit7771]

7. K&R, ... and house can LEGALLY vote in Benedict Donald as speaker of the house

[XacerbatedDem]

8. I knew the midterms were vitally important, but OMG!

[uponit7771]

15. Yep, this is a stoke the democrats can use to GOTv ...

[uponit7771]

16. Yep, this is a stoke the democrats can use to GOTv ...

[The Magistrate]

9. It Largely Is What You Hope It Is, Sir

In the case of a single slate of electors from a state, if both Senate and House do not agree to discard the votes, they stand.

In the case of competing slates of electors, if the Senate and House do not agree, the state governor's certification of one slate carries the day. It is unclear what authority besides the state's governor might render a 'competing' slate legitimate.

[XacerbatedDem]

10. Surely a governor's certification can be fought in court?

How did we get to the point where one man can negate an entire state's voters?

[The Magistrate]

14. That Is Beyond My Knowledge, Sir

It seems to me that it is state governors which would be essential to an overthrow, either by refusing to certify electors for the opposing party's candidate, or certifying an election which has been grossly distorted by throwing out a great many ballots on clearly false accusations of fraud.

Courts get involved in all sorts of things nowadays, but what authority they would have over a governor's certification is not clear to me.

We got to the point where 'one man can negate a whole state's voters' by creating and maintaining a political system which depends for its proper functioning on participants in it displaying gentlemanly sportsmanship and benevolence in their conduct, and then leaving it laying about in reach of knaves and poltroons and malicious shit-heels....

[Chainfire]

11. And the assumption is that the majority of voters would just sit back and say,

"Well you got us with that trick." That would be the time that the people would have to have to sharpen their pitchforks and head to the streets.

[Mad_Machine76]

13. +1

There WILL undoubtedly be riots with a naked power grab stunt like that. This is laying out a hypothetical technical blueprint for something like this to happen. Practically speaking, it would be suicidal for the GOP.

[CrackityJones75]

21. Why?

While not the exact same, similar happened in 2000. JAC SHIT HAPPENED.

[Mad_Machine76]

23. That was a very amorphous situation

by comparison. How 2000 was handled was not right by any stretch of the imagination and was a travesty, but it wouldn't be quite the same as state legislatures or governors or whomever out and out picking the clear loser over a clear winner that people wanted.

[CrackityJones75]

25. For me it was just as outrageous.

Especially since it was done by people who weren't even elected.

[unblock]

17. Our democracy is only as good as the people in power

Bush v gore proved that, under certain circumstances at least, that the Supreme Court can simply intervene and pick the winner. Yeah they dressed it up in official processes and procedures and all, but if you read the opinion, it's obvious that the right-wingers decided they wanted bush president and then concocted bs legal "reasoning" to pretend to justify it.

By the same token, our process for resolving legitimate electoral disputes can be abused. If a party with enough control wants to concoct a "dispute" in an election that's beyond dispute, they can nevertheless invoke the procedure and substitute their own preference.

The question is will the people stand for it.

[Midnight Writer]

20. Hmmm, maybe we could use legislation to close these silly loopholes and clarify our process.

After all, Democrats hold the House, the Senate, and the White House.

[XacerbatedDem]

22. Something needs to be done. I wonder how Manchin feels about that.

No coal involved.

[Mad_Machine76]

24. I don't think he cares

Neither he nor anybody he cares about will be affected one way or another under another 4 years of Trump or somebody just as bad. He obviously doesn't really even care who controls the Senate.