@libertybele Article II - Section 1
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List 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 shall be the President ...
For starters, the Constitution itself says nothing about a requirement to hear objections, nor does it say anything about the President of the Senate having the right to reject votes. It simply says that the certificates are opened, and counted. It doesn't even say that the VP/President of the Senate is the one who actually counts them. Literally the
only task assigned to him by the Constitution is the opening of the Certificates. Presumably, the Framers figured that between all those presumably educated people, they'd be able to add up the totals correctly.
The entire issue of objections, etc., comes from the Electoral Count Act, not the Constitution. Now personally, I don't believe that Congress is bound by the Electoral Count Act, and that each Congress is entitled to set its own rules for the counting of ballots without being bound by the law set by a prior Congress and President. But leaving that aside, if you're going to claim that Pence didn't do what he was supposed to do for objections, your only possible source is the Electoral Count Act because the Constitution itself is silent.
Cruz and Hawley raised objections of vote counts due to allegations and concerns of voter fraud -- they had the right to be heard and were not. Their objections were raised before Pence certified the election and he ignored them.
That is just
not true. I don't know from where you are getting that. The procedures specified in the Electoral Count Act provided for the filing of
written objections, and both Cruz and Hawley filed their written objections that were made available to all members of Congress. There was nothing in the Electoral Count Act requiring that the objectors be granted the right to speak at the time of making the objection. That makes sense given that it wasn't Pence's job to rule on the objections anyway.
What the ECA did require was that if a proper objection was made, the vote counting would be stopped, and the House and Senate would then meet, debate, and vote separately on the merits of the objection. And that's exactly what happened!! Cruz filed his objection to the Arizona slate. While that was being debated by the members of each House, the riots started and the debates stopped. But after the riot was over, they met again, continued to debate, and eventually voted on Cruz's objection. At 10:10 p.m., the Senate voted 93-6 against Cruz's objection.
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/congress-electoral-college-vote-count-2021/h_7075aaec7a5bc1133b62ff0cdeea5962At 11:15 p.m., the House voted 303-121 against it.
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202110So rather than Pence "ignoring" Cruz' objection, he stopped the counting after the objection was made, and properly waited while the two Houses of Congress met, debated, and voted on that objection. Only after those votes were finished did the counting resume. That's exactly what was supposed to happen, right?
The same thing happened when Hawley objection to the Pennsylvania election. The Joint Session was again adjourned at 12:15 a.m. so that the Houses could debate and vote on that objection. The Senate chose to vote immediately, and voted 92-7 against Hawley's objection.
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/congress-electoral-college-vote-count-2021/h_cb9fb54432fcc772d6b37c95dc0569cfThe House chose to debate, and finally, at 3:08 a.m., the House voted 282-138 against Hawley's objection. It was only after the vote on that objection that the counting of the electoral votes resumed.
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202111So what did Pence do wrong?? He didn't "ignore" the objections. Rather, he followed the statutory procedure to stop counting if there was a proper objection, let the two Houses debate and vote on the objection, and then continue the counting after that vote was completely. Pence was not the arbiter of which votes were acceptable --
Congress was, and
Congress voted.
I have no idea where this idea that the objections were "never heard" and that Congress "never voted" came from. Both are wrong. The only thing I can guess is that because the counting was adjourned for the riot, and people expected the counting/objections to happen then and they didn't see it on TV, they assumed it never happened. They got outraged, listened to agitators claim "the debate on objections was cancelled", and just weren't paying attention when the debates resumed and votes on objections occurred.
The objections were heard, debated, and voted upon by each House of Congress before counting resumed. That's just a historical fact.
