No, the 'Hail Mary' plan for Trump isn't going to work

[BigmanPigman]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/11/no-hail-mary-plan-trump-isnt-going-work/#click=https://t.co/x0OR136ELv

"What happens if, say, the GOP legislature in Pennsylvania goes rogue and appoints a separate pro-Trump slate of electors for the electoral college, in defiance of the state’s popular vote?"

The attorney general of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, has shot down this idea. In a statement, he flatly noted that “there is no legal mechanism” for the state legislature “to act alone and appoint electors. None.”
To oversimplify, the state legislature played its role in all this long ago when it passed the law designating this process as the “manner” by which the electors are chosen. The Constitution assigns to each state the authority to “appoint” its electors in a “manner” that the legislature “may direct.”

In all states, legislatures have “directed” that electors are appointed in accordance with the popular vote by passing laws to that effect. And in Pennsylvania, the state legislature, by passing its law, has already assigned the role of certifying the electors to the governor. It’s important to note just how rogue this would be. It would be in defiance of not just the will of the voters, but also of its own law designating the governor as the party who certifies the electors on the basis of the popular vote.

So what would happen if the state legislature did decide to send in its own slate of electors? It’s important to note just how rogue this would be. It would be in defiance of not just the will of the voters, but also of its own law designating the governor as the party who certifies the electors on the basis of the popular vote.
However, there’s still another reading of federal law that holds that in this scenario, both slates would get tossed out.

The two chambers would probably deadlock over which interpretation is right, with the House picking the first and the Senate the second. But even if the House relented and allowed the second interpretation, neither Trump nor Biden would get Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes. Biden still wins, because he’d still have 270 electoral votes anyway, with just Nevada and Arizona, and well over 270 if he holds Georgia, as expected. For Trump to win in this scenario, numerous states with GOP legislatures would all have to do this extraordinarily rogue act, enough of them to pull Biden down below 270 electoral college votes (this would kick the election in a different sense over to the House, where the relative number of state delegations would decide it).