Massive Vote Fraud (Redux)

[Martin Eisenstadt]

The filthy Nazis think they have it in the bag.  Rick says he sticks his neck out for no one, but all it takes is a nod and the patriots find their courage. . .

[Albert Hidel]

I don't think it's gotten to that point yet, although I do kinda like the "Aux armes, Citroëns" part.  (Yeah, I know it's really "citoyens," but do the French?)

Still plenty of wiggle room for the Trumpster: 



Don't fool around with Mike Pence either.

[ham]

[Fort Bragg]

The voters are telling the Democrats, "I prefer it up the ass." The whole thing was stolen in front of people's faces with zero attempt to hide it and the biggest pretend democracy in the world gives a big yawn. If you assholes think you will ever get the Democrats out of power in a future election you are idiots. They now own the process.

[Henry Greenberg]

As of today it doesn't look like any of the swing-state legislatures are doing much about revoking their fraudulent certification of electors.  Unless something changes soon, this means the ball will land in Pence's lap on January 6, 2021.  The US Constitution grants the Vice President the exclusive authority and sole discretion in determining which electoral votes to count.  However, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 creates a scheme to legitimize electoral votes in violation of the Electors Clause and limits or eliminates the VP's authority to determine which slates of electors should be counted.  This act is clearly unconstitutional.  Rep. Louie Gohmert of TX has brought a suit in federal court seeking an order upholding the powers of the VP as laid out in the US Constitution.  This may be the real Kraken.

Gohmert's complaint:
  Gohmert-v-Pence.pdf (Size: 426.22 KB / Downloads: 4)

Siegel 2004 law review article:
  Siegel-BOOK.pdf (Size: 735.12 KB / Downloads: 4)

Colvin & Foley 2010 law review article:
  214370661.pdf (Size: 3.87 MB / Downloads: 4)

Kesavan 2002 law review article:
  Is the Electoral Count Act Unconstitutional.pdf (Size: 10.53 MB / Downloads: 4)

[Albert Hidel]

Great post, Henry. Excellent research.  Lame stream media is totally ignoring these historic issues. 

Article from today covers some of the same ground, reaches the same conclusion.  If you want to change the rules you have to follow the rules.  Amending the constitution requires a constitutional amendment.  Congress cannot grab power delegated to the vice president.

Power of Vice President to Count or Reject Electoral Votes Disputed

By Petr Svab
December 29, 2020

At 1 p.m. local time on Jan. 6, members of Congress will gather in the chamber of the House of Representatives to observe the formal certification of Electoral College votes for president of the United States.

While it’s usually a formality, nothing has been usual so far about this year’s election amid numerous allegations of voter fraud in key swing states.

The situation is complicated by a lack of clarity on the legal and constitutional guardrails for the process. The joint session of Congress may well result in gridlock, in which a clear winner of the race isn’t announced at all.

Based on current election results, former Vice President Joe Biden has received 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 votes. Meanwhile, Republicans in seven states where Biden claimed victory have sent their own sets of electoral votes to Washington, and some members of the House have indicated that they will object to Biden electors in some states. Any objection would require support from one House member and one senator to be considered, and at least one senator has has left open the possibility he would join the effort.

So what will happen?

The counting of votes is primarily governed by the 12th Amendment of the Constitution and the amended Electoral Count Act.

The Constitution simply states that electors of each state have to meet, make a list of their votes, “which they shall sign and certify,” and send those to the president of the Senate, meaning Vice President Mike Pence.

“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 1804 amendment says.

The Electoral Count Act of 1887, currently known as 3 U.S. Code Section 15, establishes a procedure for how the votes are counted, how to raise objections, and how to resolve disputes. First, it says that the vice president indeed presides over the proceedings. Then, it says the House and Senate leaders each designate two tellers. The VP opens the envelopes with the vote certificates and hands them to the tellers for counting. The tellers then read them out loud, count them, and hand them back to the VP to announce the results.

Then, in rather convoluted language, the law says that Congress members can object. At least one objection from each chamber is needed to trigger a separate vote by both House and Senate on the objections. If both chambers agree, the objected voters are rejected. That’s virtually out of the question given the Democrats’ majority in the House.

If two sets of electors are presented for counting, the House and Senate need to separately vote on which set is legitimate and which should be rejected. If each chamber votes differently, the set certified by the state’s governor should count. That would hand the victory to Biden.

The problem is, there’s a voluminous body of legal analysis arguing that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional. Congress has no business granting itself the authority to decide which slate of electors is the correct one and which votes should be rejected. Nor does Congress have the power to designate state governors as the final arbiters, a lineup of legislators and legal scholars have argued.

There are two arguments for who has the constitutional power to decide which electors to choose.

Some jurists say it’s the VP who has the sole discretion to decide which votes to count. The argument is that the framers intended for the VP to be the sole authority over the counting of the votes because the unanimous resolution attached to the Constitution said that the Senate should appoint its President “for the sole Purpose of receiving, opening, and counting the Votes for President.”

Moreover, before the adoption of the Electoral Count Act, it was always the VP counting the votes, sometimes despite major objections from Congress. Thomas Jefferson did so as the VP in the 1800 election, counting Georgia’s constitutionally deficient votes and de facto securing his own presidency.

Arizona state lawmakers and GOP electors, together with Rep. Louie Gohmert, have filed a federal suit asking for the court to clarify the law to the effect that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional and the VP’s power is paramount.

Not everybody agrees, though.

University of Virginia professor John Harrison, an expert on constitutional history, says the VP doesn’t have “any constitutional power to make decisions” over which votes to count.

He argued that the law is deficient to the effect that “Congress doesn’t have the power to make the announcement [of its decisions regarding the vote count] conclusive.” But that doesn’t mean it can’t prescribe any rules at all.

“The Constitution does call for counting the votes with both houses present, so I think that setting up procedures for a count is within Congress’s power,” he told The Epoch Times via email.

The second argument is that the Constitution grants the authority to determine how electors are picked to state legislatures. As such, any disputes over which votes should be counted should be resolved by state legislatures.

The problem is, state legislatures aren’t in session and they can’t assemble in a special session without a call from the governors, who have refused to do so. Meanwhile, the legislatures have usually delegated the power to certify electors to the Governors and Secretaries of State, undermining their own authority on the matter.

The conservative Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society has filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the power of the legislatures is both “exclusive and non-delegable,” and thus any state and federal statutes to the contrary are unconstitutional and void.

That would not only knock down some provisions of the Electoral Count Act, but also render electoral votes that haven’t been certified post-election by state legislatures illegitimate.

Regardless of what the courts will say, the core question is what will take place in the House chambers on Jan. 6? Will Pence refuse to follow the Electoral Count Act? Will some of the tellers dissent? If things go wrong for the Democrats, will House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) try to end the session prematurely?

There’s no way to tell. Pence hasn’t let his intentions be known.

[WilliamW]

Another good one:

December 26, 2020
It's for Mike Pence to Judge whether a Presidential Election Was Held at All
By Ted Noel

On January 6, a joint session of Congress will open with Vice President Pence presiding as president of the Senate.  His power will be plenary and unappealable.  You heard that right.  As president of the Senate, every objection comes directly to him, and he can rule any objection "out of order" or "denied."  His task will be to fulfill his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed.  This is a high standard of performance, and V.P. Pence will have two choices.  He can roll over on "certified" electors, or he can uphold the law.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution gives state legislatures "plenary authority" as enunciated in Bush v. Gore.  This is key, since the counting of votes is discussed in Article II, the 12th Amendment, and 3 USC 15.  To this we must add the history of counting and objections recounted by Alexander Macris (here and here).  Put bluntly, it's as clear as mud.  Add to that the fact that the contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have sent dueling slates of electors to D.C.  This means that the V.P. has to decide how he will handle the situation when two sealed envelopes are handed to him from any of those states.

Macris points out that in 1800, even with constitutional deficiencies in Georgia, Thomas Jefferson blithely counted defective electoral votes from Georgia, effectively voting himself into the presidency.  This demonstrates that the president of the Senate is the final authority on any motions or objections during the vote-counting.  There is no appeal.  That doesn't mean there won't be any outrage.  Whatever Pence does, people will be angry.  But what does the law demand?

Seven contested states clearly violated their own laws.  Rather than list the facts, which have been detailed in multiple articles, we must consider the following:

An election is a process of counting votes for candidates. Only valid, lawful votes may be counted.  A valid lawful vote is:

• Cast by an eligible, properly registered elector as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
  
  
• Cast in a timely manner, as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
  
  
• Cast in a proper form as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
  

Any process that does not follow these rules is not an election.  Anything that proceeds from it cannot be regarded as having any lawful import.

Most commentators suggest that a process of collecting pieces of paper with marks on them is an election regardless of errors, omissions, and even deliberate malfeasance.  This is a mistake.  Imagine a golf tournament where every bad shot by one player gets a do-over, but the competing player has to follow USGA rules in detail.  One player gets to drop freely out of hazards, but the other has to tackle every embedded ball as it lies.  The result is a travesty.

The same thing applies to elections.  If there are a handful of improper votes, we can suggest that there was in fact an election, perhaps tainted, but the election wasn't materially harmed.  But when the people charged with managing the election decide to ignore the law, whatever process they supervise is not the process defined by the law.  Therefore, it is not an election.

This leaves V.P. Pence with a dilemma.  He is a gentleman who regards our governmental traditions with a degree of reverence, so he will be reluctant to take any bold action.  But as an honorable man, faced with massive illegality, he must act to protect the law.  Consider how things might go down as the two closed envelopes from Georgia are handed to the V.P.  Rather than opening them, he says:

In my hand are envelopes purporting to contain electoral votes from Georgia.  They are competing for consideration, so it is essential that I consider the law that governs this.  That law, according to the Legislature of Georgia and Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution is the Georgia statute that includes procedures for signature-matching on absentee ballots, a requirement that all absentee ballots be first requested by a legitimate voter, and that election monitors be meaningfully present at all times while votes were counted.

The Georgia secretary of state, who is not empowered by the U.S. Constitution to make changes to election law, entered into a Consent Decree that gutted these protections enacted by the Georgia Legislature.  The processes that he prescribed and were ultimately followed were manifestly contrary to that law.  Further, the State of Georgia, in unprecedented concert with other states, suspended counting of ballots in the middle of the night, covering its conspiracy with a false claim of a "water main break."  We now know from surveillance video that many thousands of "ballots" were counted unlawfully in the absence of legally required observers.

Finally, the State of Georgia, under the authority of secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a non-legislative actor, used fatally flawed Dominion voting machines that have been demonstrated to be unreliable.  In testing, the error rate of Dominion machines has exceeded 60%, far in excess of legal limits.  They are designed to facilitate fraud without creating the legally required paper trail.  This alone is far more than enough to swing an election.

Since the state of Georgia has failed to follow the election law established by its legislature under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, it has not conducted a presidential election.  Therefore, no "presidential electors" were appointed in Georgia.  Further, "electors" "certified" by non-legislative actors pursuant to this process are in fact not "presidential electors."  The competing slate of "electors" is similarly deficient, having not been elected through a presidential election.

Therefore, the chair rules that Georgia has not transmitted the votes of any presidential electors to this body.  Georgia presents zero votes for Donald Trump and zero votes for Joseph Biden.

The central point is that the VP, as the presiding officer and final authority, has the unquestionable authority to declare that the states in question have not conducted presidential elections.  There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, but no one has the authority to override his decision.

The statement says nothing about who might or might not have "won" the contested states.  Rather, by not following their own laws, as enacted by their own legislatures, they have violated Article II, Section 1.  Thus, they have not conducted an election, and their results are void.

If the votes of all seven contested states are registered as zero, President Trump will have 232 votes, and Joe Biden will have 222.  The 12th Amendment says, "[T]he votes shall then be counted[.] ...  The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President[.]"

In plain language, Donald Trump will be re-elected, since he has a majority of the actual electoral votes.  There will be no need to involve the House of Representatives to resolve a contingent election.

Richard Nixon chose not to contest the 1960 election because he felt that winning that way would lead to an ungovernable country.  If V.P. Pence does this, that same argument might be made.  But is the country governable even now?  Blue states such as California, Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan are already operating in an openly lawless manner with their "emergency" "COVID-related" restrictions.  Their denial of the civil rights of law-abiding citizens is horrific.  Their refusal to do basic policing and law enforcement is a recipe for open war.  How much worse would things be if the V.P. lived up to his oath and upheld the law?

[Martin Eisenstadt]

As of today it doesn't look like any of the swing-state legislatures are doing much about revoking their fraudulent certification of electors.  Unless something changes soon, this means the ball will land in Pence's lap on January 6, 2021. 

Here's what to look for Tuesday.  Pence has the ball and he will punt it back to the state legislatures.  Very sanitary solution, and Trump ultimately wins, as he should.

Trump lawyer suggests Pence could defer certifying election, send requests to state legislatures
Jenna Ellis suggests the vice president could seek clarity from legislators in states where election results are being disputed.

By John Solomon
Updated: January 4, 2021

One of President Trump's campaign attorneys suggested Monday that Vice President Mike Pence delay certifying the elections results for Joe Biden when Congress convenes Wednesday and instead ask legislatures in the six states where results have been contested to clarify which candidate's slate of electors should be approved.

Jenna Ellis, senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, floated the idea Monday afternoon during an appearance on the Just the News television show The Water Cooler with David Brody.

"What Mike Pence could do, and what he should do, in fact, is to direct a question back to the state legislatures when there are two competing slates of delegates from these six states, he can ask that question to the states and say, 'well, state legislators, you know, I have an oath to the Constitution to uphold the Constitution as written in Article II Section 1.2 which says the state legislatures direct the manner in which electoral delegates are selected. So you tell me which of these two slates was selected in the manner that your state general assembly has designated,'" Ellis said.

"And that's a fair question. That's not exercising discretion. That's not setting up any sort of bad precedent. That's actually returning the authority to the constitutionally vested entity and just simply directing that question I think would then require a response from these very timid, to put it lightly, state legislators that haven't been willing to act, and it would in fact then give a very clean outcome to this election," she added.

The six states she cited are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. In all six states, the governments have declared Biden the winner and sent electors to Congress supporting the Democrat. But Trump supporters and some legislators in each of those states have said they don't trust the results because of irregularities and changes to election processes that weren't approved by the Legislatures. Courts have steadfastly refused to intervene despite numerous lawsuits challenging the results.

While as many as 100 GOP lawmakers in the U.S. House and a dozen GOP senators are expected to contest the results, congressional leaders say they have the votes to approve Biden's electors. 

Ellis suggested that Pence could take the action at the beginning of Congress' electoral review proceedings Wednesday, "before even opening any of the certificates that are sent," based on publicly stated objections raised by several legislators in each of the states. 

It is unclear whether Pence would support doing so, or if the vice president, a strict constitutionalist throughout his career, believes the Constitution to empowers him to take such action.

Pence over the weekend issued a statement through his chief of staff Marc Short saying he supported the efforts of GOP House members and senators to contest the results.

In a follow up email to Just the News, Ellis described the steps she believed could be taken lawfully:

• Pence should not open any of the votes from the six states, and instead direct a question to the legislatures asking them to confirm which of the two slates of electors have in fact been chosen in the manner the legislature has provided for under Article II, Section 1.2 of the U.S. Constitution.
  
• The Vice President should open all other votes from states where electors have been certified and not contested, and count accordingly.
  
• The question would then require a response from the legislatures, which would then need to meet in an emergency electoral session.
  
• Pence should require a timely response from each state legislature and set a deadline of Jan. 17. If any state legislature fails to provide a timely response, no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state. The Constitution provides that if no candidate for President receives a majority of electoral votes, the Congress shall vote by state delegation. This would provide two and one-half days for Congress to meet and vote by delegation prior to January 20 at noon for inauguration.
  
• Pence would not be exercising discretion nor establishing new precedent, simply asking for clarification from the constitutionally appointed authority in each of the six states.
  

[Yancy Derringer]

[Fort Bragg]

Why did the Republican Party just destroy itself? No conservative will ever again vote for these clowns. When push comes to shove Pence and crew line up with China Joe to blow Xi Jinping for Chinese cash. America surrendered to China without a fight. The corruption appears absolute.