Elie Mystal: That "Little Secret" Between Trump and Johnson? Here's What It Could Mean.

[lees1975]

10. I love the creativity of all of the convoluted twists and turns of devious ways Republicans are going to try to steal

the election. It shows exactly how serious the threat is, how little confidence we have in a corrupt and crooked Supreme Court, and in the fact that the GOP is no longer committed to American constitutional democracy.

Congress has nothing to do with the appointment of electors, or with conducting the electoral vote. That is done in the states, and the certification of the electoral votes is done in the states. Only Georgia and Nevada, among the battleground states, have Republicans in the state legislature who would be in charge of certification. You'd have to check and see what each state's laws say about who and how electoral votes are certified, but I think they're all the same as or similar to Arizona, where the deadlines are clear and where the Secretary of State certifies the popular vote first, which elects the electors, then certifies the electoral vote and sends the ballot to Congress for the Jan 6 ceremony. Legally, at that point, the electoral votes are certified, which completes the constitutional responsibility of the state to hold an election. What happens in the newly elected Congress is a ballot count. The Vice President conducts that. I don't see Johnson getting a two thirds vote to stop any votes from being counted, which is all he could do, especially not if Democrats win back control of the House. Hakeem Jeffries will be speaker on January 6th.

There could be federal court challenges to the vote count, and those might actually make it to the Supreme Court, though in 2020, without evidence, they went nowhere and we have the same 6 dumbasses on the bench as we did then.