On January 6 Congress will gather to hear Vice President Pence open the envelopes and count the electoral votes. The outcome is a foregone conclusion. The House and the Senate will vote to accept the results. However, the size of the challenge is becoming unusual. It looks as if circa 175 GOP House members will join in the challenge to the electoral votes from the contested states. In the Senate Josh Hawley has announced he will support the challenge. This is important, as challenges are needed from both chambers of Congress to force a vote on accepting the electoral votes. Now, Hawley has been joined by eleven other GOP Senators:
A group of GOP senators led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, will object to the Jan. 6 certification of the presidential election results next week unless there is an emergency 10-day audit of the results by an electoral commission.
Cruz and the other senators claim the Nov. 3 election “featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud and illegal conduct.”
Joining Cruz are Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; James Lankford, R-Okla.; Steve Daines, R-Mont.; John Kennedy, R-La.; Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Mike Braun, R-Ind.; as well as Sens.-elect Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.; Roger Marshall, R-Kansas; Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.
Their effort is separate from one announced by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who said this week that he will object to what he claims was the failure of some states — most notably Pennsylvania — to follow their own election laws.
Go here to read the rest. So what if anything does this accomplish since Joe Biden will be sworn in anyway? It puts the GOP on record as stating that the Presidential election was stolen. It makes sure that in history their is going to be an asterisk by Biden’s name and it crowns Trump, the man who had his victory stolen from him, as the leader of the opposition for the next four years. It also tells the GOP leadership in Congress that if they had illusions about making nice with the incoming administration they will soon be chiefs without Indians.
Vice President Pence has signed on to the objections. No, he is not going to attempt to throw out electoral votes when he counts them. That ship sailed when no Republican legislature in the contested states certified a competing slate of electors. However it does mean that attempts to drive a wedge between Trump and Pence on whether the election was stolen has failed.
For more on this see Forge and Anvil: Bring Out The Electors. It’s Showtime.
https://forge-and-anvil.com/2021/01/03/bring-out-the-electors-its-showtime/
Don.
Will the election processes be reformed by Federal mandate or will it be up to the States to reform the system which seems so open to corruption. Including of course mail in ballots validity.
It will be a state effort, unless the Feds attempt to pass a national statue and invoke Federal preemption.
The New GOP better make election tabulating, vetting ballots and insuring clean voters priority #1.
Losing faith in this system is loosing freedoms.
Dominion systems be damned.
Maybe a few GOP senators will exhibit two virtues totally lacking in politicians: courage and honesty.
Xi Jinjoe Didn’t Win. We Were Robbed. We Know What They Did Last November.
No Justice. No Peace.
I like Kabuki as much as the next guy. Nobody, but nobody puts on a show the GOP.
Actually the reverse is the truth. The Republicans are bad at putting on shows, and this is far from a show.
A large percentage of citizens realize the election was fraudulent and more will turn against Biden as his presidency flounders.
The primary factor that kept the Democrats together was a mutual hatred of Donald Trump. Conservatives have had to fight against the Democrats as well as the back stabbing Establishment Republicans (some with the confidence of Trump). But now Biden will need to lead rather than sit in his basement and criticize the Trump straw man his allies created.
I’m sure that the Democrats understand that there is probably at best a 2 year window before Conservatives are able to gain enough influence to block the Democrat agendas. I suspect there will be rush for the Democrats to revise election laws to give them a permanent advantage during this narrow window.
Conservatives may benefit from reminding the radical socialists that the Democratic Establishment stole the nomination twice from Bernie and Democrat Party election reform will be designed to maintain power for those who are part of the party’s establishment.
Neither Kevin McCarthy nor McConnell are the leaders we need. I’m quite pessimistic inasmuch as the Republican Party as an institution has a poor record of sustained attention to much of anything. It has some consistent impulses you see at the state level. (Pass a tax cut >> business / careerists Republicans in gatekeeper positions frustrate efforts to pass spending cuts >> succeeding Democratic administration rescinds tax cut to close the budget deficit >> rinse, repeat). There’s been attention to voter ID, even as ballot security was ruined in every other aspect of the process of collecting and tabulating votes.
On the optimistic side, the GOP may be able to delay the vote to force a SCOTUS intervention.