It wasn’t spontaneous
In July of 2020, Barton Gelman wrote a story for the Atlantic entitled “What if Trump refuses to concede?” It was prescient in many ways but I think this is the most important detail:
We are accustomed to choosing electors by popular vote, but nothing in the Constitution says it has to be that way. Article II provides that each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Since the late 19th century, every state has ceded the decision to its voters. Even so, the Supreme Court affirmed in Bush v. Gore that a state “can take back the power to appoint electors.” How and when a state might do so has not been tested for well over a century.
Trump may test this. According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.
Gelman wrote this in July of 2020. This wasn’t some hare-brained scheme that John Eastman and Ken Cheseboro cooked up after the election. This was planned.
Now, they thought they could get this done before December 8th but they missed that deadline. At that point they moved their target date to January 6th. But the plan was essentially the same, only with Pence only accepting the fake electors and throwing the vote count to the House. But the fake elector concept was in play long before.
I don’t know if their alternate plan was thought out in advance but the fake electors plan certainly was. Gelman wrote about it months before any votes were cast. How can they possibly be allowed to get away with this?
Happy Hollandaise will continue through the end of the year so if you are still of a mind to throw some support this way you can do so with the buttons below or the address on the left sidebar. And thank you!!!