Help Wanted: One GOP Senator With Guts
Someone needs to decide to have a backbone on January 6.
by David Catron
December 28, 2020, 10:32 PM
On January 6, Congress will meet in a joint session to validate the 51 slates of presidential electors chosen during the December 14 meeting of the Electoral College and certified by the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This is no mere formality. Until this venerable ceremony is complete, the recent presidential election has no official winner. If one congressman and one senator jointly object in writing to any of the 51 slates of electors, the process grinds to a halt until the challenge is resolved. In other words, Joe Biden’s Electoral College majority is quite literally meaningless until confirmed by January’s joint session of Congress.
If, for example, an objection is raised on the grounds that one or more slates of electors has been illegally certified due to a violation of state election laws or the U.S. Constitution, the joint session goes into recess. The House and Senate then debate the issue separately and put the matter to a vote. This is by no means as unlikely as one might gather from news reports and opinion pieces in the media. In fact, it has happened as recently as 2005, when Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) objected to the slate of electors submitted by Ohio based on “widespread irregularities.â€
Oddly enough, neither Tubbs nor Boxer was accused of “sedition†for raising this objection. No one denounced the former as “anti-democratic†when she asked, “How can we possibly tell millions of Americans who registered to vote, who came to the polls in record numbers, particularly our young people … to simply get over it and move on?†Both Tubbs and Boxer were supported by the leadership of their party. This is more than any GOP senator who objects to Biden electors can count on from Republican leadership. Indeed, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has discouraged such action, as AP reports:
McConnell and his lieutenants, including Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and Roy Blunt of Missouri, warned the senators off any Electoral College challenge, according to one of the people familiar with Tuesday’s call. The GOP leaders further warned senators that forcing their colleagues into a vote on Electoral College challenges would prove difficult, especially for those facing their own reelections in 2022.… Some GOP lawmakers have vowed to carry the fight to Jan. 6 when Congress votes to accept or reject the Electoral College results.
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https://spectator.org/election-gop-senator/
