Trump’s gambit would have subverted the Constitution, just as former Vice President Pence has explained.
The sentence says nothing about rejecting state electors, “marshaling” alternative slates of electors, or anything about resolving supposed disputes.
But the Electoral Count Act explicitly allowed for congressmen and senators to object to any state’s certified electoral votes.
In fact, Republican lawmakers had objected to Arizona’s electoral votes just before Trump’s mob overran the U.S. Capitol building.
Vance concedes that Biden “probably” would have still been president if Vance had been vice president and, unlike Pence, bent the knee to Trump.
Prior to tonight’s Vice Presidential Debate, let us remember why J.D. Vance is scheduled to appear on stage. The junior Ohio senator Vance lacked substantial government experience, which is why Donald Trump did not select him as his running mate. Nor did Trump select him on the basis of any significant achievements in the private sector. No, Trump picked Vance because, in comparison to his predecessor, former Vice President Mike Pence, he has shown himself to be far more submissive.
Pence has told the American people time and time again that on January 6, 2021, Trump made him make a decision. He could either continue to be loyal to the U.S. s. either the Constitution or he could work for Trump. None of the two could he do. The Constitution was Pence’s choice. By his own admission, Vance would have selected Trump.
It is necessary to provide some background. Trump came up with two plans for Pence to rig the 2020 election, according to Pence, who calls the group of lawyers a “gaggle of crackpot lawyers.”. Joe Biden’s certified electoral votes from a number of swing states were required to be rejected by Pence, according to Trump, or the votes had to be “sent back to the states to recertify.”. The first strategy was to compel a presidential vote in the House of Representatives, where state delegations were overwhelmingly controlled by Republicans. The election result could then have been overturned by Congressional Republicans, putting Trump in office. Pence was not impressed.
Therefore, Trump and his advisors concentrated on the second option, requesting that Pence return Biden’s legitimate electoral votes to the swing states rather than counting them. Had Pence agreed to this plan, Trump and his allies would have exerted pressure on state legislatures controlled by Republicans to reverse the outcome of their state’s popular vote, decertify Biden’s electors, and certify Trump’s electors instead, giving Trump the presidency. Once again, Pence declined. Vance has stated time and time again that he would have acceded to some variation of this second demand.
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Just before Trump selected Vance as his running mate, the congressman gave a long interview to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in which he laid out his rationale, such as it was. If Vance had been in Pence’s position following the 2020 election, he would not have stopped at supervising the official tally of Biden’s valid electoral votes on January 6, 2021, during the joint session of Congress; rather, he would have attempted “to marshal alternative slates of electors” from the states. If there had truly been an attempt to provide alternative slates of electors, Vance asserted, “the whole post-2020 thing would have gone a lot better.”. (Obviously, Trump and his advisors orchestrated a scheme to generate a different set of electors: on December 14, 2020, Trump fans in a number of states cast fraudulent electoral votes, which were forwarded to Washington, D.C. favoring the plan to rig the election. ( ).
Should Trump have pursued this path, according to Vance, he would have been merely “trying to take a constitutional process to its natural conclusion” and “using the constitutional procedures.”. “.
That is just untrue. According to former Vice President Pence, Trump’s gambit would have violated the Constitution.
Pence could not refuse to count the states’ duly certified electors and “marshal alternative slates of electors” in their stead as vice president because he lacked the congressional or constitutional authority to do so. Chapter 5 of the House January 6th Committee’s final report details the extensive investigation into this matter conducted by Pence and his legal advisor, Greg Jacob. Pence and Jacob correctly concluded that the Twelfth Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governed the certification proceeding, did not grant the vice president of the Senate any such authority. A plan similar to Trump’s was never allowed by the Electoral Count Act, which was amended in 2022. ( ).
One pertinent line appears in the Twelfth Amendment: “The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall thereupon be counted.”. The absurd claim made by Trump and his legal team was that this short passage effectively gave Pence, or, in the event that he had not shown up, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Senate’s president pro tempore, the authority to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
This reading seems ludicrous at first glance. It doesn’t say anything about “marshaling” other slates of electors, rejecting state electors, or settling any apparent disagreements. Despite using a passive voice, it merely states that the electoral votes will be opened and tallied. And that’s it.
Pence has consistently rejected, quite rightly, the notion that the Constitution gave him this kind of authority. Pence stated his reasoning for the decision in an open letter he sent on January 6.
As a history major who values the Constitution and its Framers, I don’t think our nation’s founders intended for the vice president to have the exclusive power to determine which electoral votes should be counted during the Joint Session of Congress, and no vice president in American history has ever claimed such power.
In history, Vance would have been the first vice president to exercise such unrestricted power.
Vance claims in his interview with Dorthat that all Trump wanted on January 6th was a “real political debate about the 2020 election” in an attempt to defend his unconstitutional power grab. Congressmen and senators, however, were expressly permitted by the Electoral Count Act to object to any state’s certified electoral votes. Actually, right before Trump’s horde took control of the U.S. Senate, Republican lawmakers had protested Arizona’s electoral votes. s. The Capitol.
The Republicans could not reverse the election results by using the processes outlined in the Electoral Count Act, as Trump and his attorneys were aware of the ultimate futility of their objections. Because the law had governed the certification process for 130 years, Pence was under pressure from Trump and his advisors to break it.
Yet again, Pence declined. As stated in his letter dated January 6th,.
Vice Presidents chairing Joint Sessions have consistently adhered to the Electoral Count Act, directing the proceedings in a disciplined fashion even in situations where their party or their own candidacy was defeated.
Once more, had Vance chosen to disregard the Electoral Count Act, he would have become the first vice president in history.
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The authority to direct states regarding which slates of electors should be certified is likewise not vested in the President or the Vice President. The Constitution’s Article II, section 1, clause 2 gives state legislatures the authority to “direct” the “Manner” in which the electors in each state are “appoint[ed].”. State legislatures are not permitted by the Constitution to change or reverse this procedure once all the votes have been cast and counted, much less after the state’s election officials have certified the results. The District of Columbia, as well as all fifty states. elected officials will be chosen by the electorate, as was decided long ago. That is, the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in each state also wins the state’s electoral votes. It is theoretically possible for a state legislature to decide ahead of an election that the state’s electoral vote winner will no longer be determined by the popular vote. It would almost certainly be rejected by the electorate. But, in contrast to the absurd theories put forth by Trump’s attorneys, no state legislature has the authority to annul a legitimately conducted popular vote and select the electors themselves after an election has already taken place.
Republican-controlled state legislatures, governors, and secretaries of state in the battleground states turned down Trump’s demand to void the popular vote’s outcome in late 2020. Trump aimed his tyrannical gaze at Pence for this reason. Trump wanted the invalidation of millions of votes cast in multiple states by his own vice president, after he was unable to get Republican state officials to carry out his orders. Trump’s demand, taken in its broadest sense, would have denied the over 81 million voters who supported Joe Biden the right to vote.
In contrast to Pence, Vance acknowledges that Biden “probably” would still be in office if he had served as vice president and submitted to Trump. Vance, however, reassures us that even in the unlikely event that Trump’s “alternative-electors thing” had succeeded, the “idea” that he would have taken over as the country’s dictator is absurd. According to Vance, Trump “would have played golf, enjoyed his life, and served for four years before retiring.”. “.
In other words, Vance wants us to think that Trump would have acquiesced to a weak power vacuum if he had helped to successfully overturn an election.
Nobody who is still an American and supports the U. S. It is possible that the Constitution is unaffected by Trump’s desire for dictatorship. We shouldn’t give Trump or Vance another chance to overthrow our constitutional system of government either.
Thomas Joscelyn was a principal author of the committee’s final report and a senior professional staff member of the House January 6th Committee.
