U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas speaking at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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Persistent. Give them that:
Rep. Louie Gohmert became the latest Republican to file a long-shot lawsuit attempting to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s victory — this time by suing Vice President Mike Pence.
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The suit asks federal Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee in eastern Texas, to declare that Pence has the “exclusive authority and sole discretion” to decide which electoral votes from a given state should be counted.
The lawsuit filed Monday demands that on Jan. 6 Pence, as President of the Senate, reject electoral votes from a set of swing states Trump lost (because he lost them). Toss out enough of them and Trump’s electoral vote total exceeds Joe Biden’s.
Here is the relevant language from Amendment XII (emphasis mine):
The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;–The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;–the person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President …
“Shall … open all the certificates” and “the votes shall then be counted” seems cut and dried. “No, this won’t work,” writes election law expert Rick Hasen of Gohmert’s folly.
“If the Twelfth Amendment somehow gave the Vice President the power to unilaterally throw out electoral votes for the other guy in favor of their own party (and even themselves), one might think that one of them would’ve noticed by now,” tweeted Steven Vladeck, professor of law at the University of Texas. “But I guess they were all just idiots…”
No, they were not. The idiots are anti-democracy cultists backing impeached, one-term president Donald J. Trump, loser of the national popular vote … twice.
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