This is why I'm glad to see that most of the candidates stuck by Mike Pence, who did do his constitutional duty on that day and has taken tremendous flak for it.
Well, except the part that got skipped, The part about Objections.
And that is why I would vote for my garbage collector before I'd vote for Pence. The Garbage collector manages to do his
whole job, consistently, no matter what is going on outside.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL32717/12Objecting to the Counting of One or More Electoral Votes
Provisions in 3 U.S.C. §15 include a procedure for making and acting on objections to the
counting of one or more of the electoral votes from a state or the District of Columbia. When the
certificate or equivalent paper from each state (or the District of Columbia) is read, “the President
of the Senate shall call for objections, if any.” Any such objection must be presented in writing
and must be signed by at least one Senator and one Representative. The objection “shall state
clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof.... ” During the joint session of
January 6, 2001, the presiding officer intervened on several occasions to halt attempts to make
speeches under the guise of offering an objection.
When an objection, properly made in writing and endorsed by at least one Senator and one
Representative, is received, each house is to meet and consider it separately. The statute states
that “[n]o votes or papers from any other State shall be acted upon until the objections previously
made to the votes or papers from any State shall have been finally disposed of.” However, in
1873, before enactment of the law now in force, the joint session agreed, without objection and
for reasons of convenience, to entertain objections with regard to two or more states before the
houses met separately on any of them.
Disposing of Objections
The joint session does not act on any objections that are made. Instead, the joint session is
suspended while each house meets separately to debate the objection and vote whether, based on
the objection, to count the vote or votes in question. Both houses must vote separately to agree to
the objection. Otherwise, the objection fails and the vote or votes are counted. (3 U.S.C. §15,
provides that “the two Houses concurrently may reject the vote or votes.... ”)
These procedures have been invoked twice since enactment of the 1887 law. The first was an
instance of what has been called the “faithless elector” problem. In 1969, a Representative (James
O’Hara of Michigan) and a Senator (Edmund S. Muskie of Maine) objected in writing to counting
the vote of an elector from North Carolina who had been expected to cast his vote for Richard
Nixon and Spiro Agnew, but who instead cast his vote for George Wallace and Curtis LeMay.
Both chambers met and voted separately to reject the objection, so when the joint session
resumed, the challenged electoral vote was counted as cast.11 In that instance, the elector whose
vote was challenged was from a state that did not by law “bind” its electors to vote only for the
candidates to whom they were pledged. The instance of a “faithless” elector from a state that
does, in fact, bind the elector by law to vote for the candidate to whom listed or pledged has not
yet been expressly addressed by Congress or the courts.12
11 When the two chambers reconvened in joint session, the Secretary of the Senate reported that the Senate had agreed to the following action: “Ordered, that the Senate by a vote of 33 ayes to 58 nays rejects the objection to the electoral votes cast in the State of North Carolina for George C. Wallace for President and Curtis E. LeMay for Vice President.”
The Clerk of the House stated the results of the House action: “Ordered, that the House of Representatives rejects the objection to the electoral vote of the State of North Carolina submitted by the Representative from Michigan, Mr. O’Hara, and the Senator from Maine, Mr. Muskie.” Congressional Record, vol. 115 (January 6, 1969), p. 171. The House vote was 170-228. See also Deschler’s Precedents, vol. 3, chap. 10, §3.6. Both houses used roll call votes to
decide the question.
12 See Ray v. Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952) in which the Court upheld the permissibility of such state limitations but did not address their enforceability.
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