Imagine yourself as a Georgia GOP presidential elector.
Imagine election officials, the courts, and the governor certified Biden as the 2020 election winner, amid much controversy.
Imagine your candidate and his lawyers ask you to sign a document saying you, not Biden's electors, were "duly elected."
Question: Would you sign the document?
Republican electors in two states, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, hesitated to sign the official certification drafted for them by the Trump campaign. Their certification of election began with "We, the undersigned, on the understanding that it might later be determined that we are the duly elected and qualified Electors for President. . . . "
These certifications were changed from the language drafted for them by the Trump campaign, which wanted GOP electors in states Trump lost by a close margin to claim flat-out victory. Biden had been certified as the victor in Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, groups of GOP electors in five states signed the documents drafted by the Trump campaign which directly stated they were "duly elected." The Trump campaign hoped that the two competing slates, each claiming to be valid, would cause the Biden ballots not to be counted, since there was an apparent dispute. No one would get 270 electoral votes. This would throw the country into chaos. There might be martial law, there would certainly be riots in the streets, and amid this civil unrest the House of Representatives would settle the matter by electing Trump. A presumably-friendly Supreme Court would consent to this.
That was the plan.
The plan required GOP state electors to agree to sign a document that began like this, claiming victory:
It concluded with their signatures:
I attempt to put myself in their shoes. They are Republican activists. They wanted Trump to win. Trump was personally calling state officials declaring that he had indeed won. Trump campaign lawyers were telling these electors that this was legal. The dual claims of election might let Trump stay in office. Sign. Or else Biden. The future of America was in their hands.
They signed.
I would not have signed. If I were a Republican elector I would have happily signed the New Mexico and Pennsylvania certifications, but not this one from Georgia nor the identical ones in other battleground states.
The document claiming I was duly elected and qualified would have stopped me. At best there was dispute, but in fact Biden's electors were duly elected and courts had investigated evidence and said so. My self-protection alarm bells would be going off. Don't sign false documents. "Duly elected?" No. I could imagine trouble down the road: Fraud. Perjury. Criminal penalties.
Electors are facing indictments in Michigan and in Georgia. Georgia electors are claiming that they were just following instructions of the president and his attorneys. That is undoubtably true, that they were following instructions, but that is not a legal defense in Georgia, nor is it a moral one. They signed claiming something that simply was not true.
I have asked four former elected officials who held nonpartisan office if they would have signed and they were adamant: No way.
A local Republican businessman who I consider quite reasonable, a Nikki Haley supporter, took the opposite view. He said if electors thought that Trump had won, or maybe won, even though the vote was counted, re-counted, and certified for Biden, then they had every right to sign it. Moreover, he said the state DAs and Department of Justice should not charge them with anything. There was no crime, he said. They were signing their opinion that they were duly elected. They tried something and it failed, so no harm was done. His frustration is directed at the prosecution. Why are they dividing the country by bringing this up? The DAs and DoJ are just squeezing innocent people into lying to give damning testimony against the higher-ups, he said.
I invite comments from readers. Try imagining yourself a Biden elector in a battleground state. Imagine Democratic leaders and your favorite cable news sources are saying that Republican operatives had created disturbances at precincts in your state's urban center, a Democratic stronghold, that suppressed the vote there. What happened is unknown and fraud is unproved, but the events on election night are suspicious. Imagine a DCC attorney phoned you to say it was OK to sign calling yourself duly elected because it was just part of the legal process to give Congress a chance to sort out the truth. And if you don't sign then Trump is allowed to steal the election, and in his second term he would end democracy in America.
Would you have signed?
Write in the comment section, or send me an email directly and I may work your thoughts into a guest post: peter.w.sage@gmail.com
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25 comments:
On July 6, 2020, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled, “A State may enforce an elector’s pledge to support his party’s nominee — and the state voters’ choice — for President. ...Electors are not free agents; they are to vote for the candidate whom the State’s voters have chosen.”
Electors who violate their pledge participated in an effort to undermine the foundation of our republic – free and fair elections. The U.S. is now in the midst of a heated discussion over whether that’s illegal. Stay tuned.
Remember when Al Gore "lost" in Florida and won the national popular vote? Use that as an example. Hillary Clinton also won the popular vote.
Their "opinion" does not matter. The opinions of the courts (60 different cases, as I recall) and Secretary of State matters. Not to mention the former Occupant's own White House team.
Why you allow these people to gaslight you is beyond me. They are similar to Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. After all this time, you still do not understand how cults operate. It is so strange. Wake up dude!
If a cashier’s till is left unattended would you steal? If you know it is wrong, justifying is a way criminals make it ok to do what they want to do. Minimizing, excuse making, what if thinking are ways criminals proceed. Seems to me the signers engaged in criminal acts because they wanted to. If the cashier’s till was left open it’s still stealing.
Believe me, I have heard lots of excuses for engaging in criminal behavior and when a criminal makes excuses for their criminal behavior I know that’s a bad prognostic sign. They are trying to say it was okay what they did when it was not, maybe they are the victim. Not a good sign from the court’s perspective.
The Dumpster Fire President and his delusional followers would not even listen to Mr. Conservative Christian Himself, VP Mike Pence OR President Dumpster Fire's own Attorney General, William Barr.
It's like when parents say "No," but the teenagers do it anyway.
I think this matter is more complicated than what Peter wrote.
The Constitution is not clear about how electors are selected.
This URL goes into more detail about how electors are selected. They are not selected by voters. They are selected by party leaders.
https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/electors
Yes, it's a mess, and perhaps we will get better closure for future elections.
As for Peter's question, I'm not sure things would be different with the other side in the same position.
Lawyers will try anything if there's a chance of winning with their strategy.
You are so right. Criminals and their accomplices always have a reason/justification/excuse/motive for their criminality. The leaders will drag their dim-witted accomplices down with them.
The author of this blog should start reading books about true crime or watching true crime tv to learn more about the criminal mind. There is also a lot of legitimate information about criminal minds, narcissists and psychopaths on the internet.
I wish I knew that "reasonabke" Republicans business, so I could avoid it as though it were a hotbed if Ebola Plague. These people can not be reasoned with, full stop.
I think this matter is less complicated than what M2inFLA wrote. Even if the Constitution isn't entirely clear, the courts are: The electors are to vote for the candidate whom the State's voters have chosen.
In 2020, there was no question who won the election except among liars, idiots and gullible whackos.
I'm quite sure "I was only following my orders" ceased any credibility as a defense at a place called Nuremburg, shortly after the end of WWII. It didn't work fir Nazis, and it shouldn't be acceptable for their 21st Century followers.
What if, after the 2020 election, a red state legislature had decided to change things and appoint the state’s electors itself, throwing the election to Trump,? That would have been completely fine under the US Constitution, so the US Supreme Court would have had nothing to say about it. The state Supreme Court might have weighed in, or maybe not.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem tells us that questions can arise in a set of logical rules that cannot be answered within that set of rules; no such set can be “complete“. The founding fathers understood this (centuries before Gödel), and included an amendment process and a Supreme Court to handle such things in the set of rules we know as the US Constitution.
But the question I am raising would have to be answered at the state level.
The answer has to be NO! The affidavit claiming I was duly elected is FALSE! In the flipped script scenario you posit (did anyone notice?) Trump has won in 2024 and you are being asked by D lawyers to falsely claim otherwise to save democracy. At best there was dispute, but in fact TRUMP’s electors were duly elected.
If you can’t answer the same way for a hypothetical flipped script in 2024, then your ethics are no better, IMHO, than the current Georgia defendants that are routinely pilloried here ...
I am a New Mexican.
It sounds like Michael Trigoboff is referring to the “independent state legislature” theory, a fringe legal theory that Republicans recently tried to adopt. Fortunately, the Supreme Court rejected it by a 6-3 vote back in June.
Mike, I agree.
The point I was trying to make was that the party selects the electors, and in theory, those electors might be convinced or coerced to do the party's bidding. Hopefully not.
Since the courts would simply overrule any deviation by an elector, there's really no reason to even have electors. At the time of the Constitution's writing, those electors were simply the people sent to pass along the election result.
Mike Steely misunderstands what I said. I was not referring to the “independent state legislature” theory. I based my remarks on the US Constitution, which is very clear and unambiguous:
Article. II.
Section. 1.
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
No, I wouldn’t have signed. These slates of electors were clearly designed to be contingent on the other (real) electors being thrown out for some (legally dubious) reason. The Pennsylvania and New Mexico alternate electors reasonably asked that the language reflect that contingency. Anyone with any sense would have done the same. Alas, the die-hard Trump election deniers have no sense because they don’t accept reality.
M2inFLA -
If you are suggesting the electoral system may be obsolete, I also agree. The original electors took the election results by horseback. Now we have electricity.
So, MT, you disagree with the SCOTUS, as referred to in Michael's initial post ?
Mike, no.
We just don't need the electors.
The results can be communicated electronically. There's a good reason for having elections based on electoral votes.
Otherwise, states like Oregon have no real influence on electing the President. You live with the results based on the more populated states.
M2, seeing's how we at least nominally live in a democracy, why SHOULD we Oregonians get power to elect potus beyond our admittedly low population?
Besides, we already benefit from the stacked deck that gives us a zillion times the power per voter than most other states (two Senators in tiny Oregon and huge Texas, calif, ny, etc)
The Supreme Court case that MS referred to was about gerrymandering, not about choosing electors. The Court has not spoken in any way about how states may or may not decide to choose electors.
Malcolm, you can't have it both ways.
We have the Representatives according to population, and fixed number of Senators for each state as in the Constitution, as are the electors and the Electoral College.
Yes Electors are to report the results of election, not what their party might want them to do.
A lopsided popular vote should not elect the president.
What might be better is amending the Constitution to have more electors to better deal with the outsized population of larger states. Look at the relative population size of districts in the largest states like California, compared to the population of the 1 representative district in smallest states.
M2 we’re on the same page Re “A lopsided popular vote should not elect the president. But what I’d like is for equal representation in the House AND in the Senate, like we have in Oregon. What a ridiculous scam for tiny states, e.g. Wyoming, to get the same number of senators as a big ass one, e.g. texas. Totally undemocratic. But guess what? I won’t get what I want :)
Not sure what you meant bye”both ways”. I just want equal representation in electing potus AND in making laws.
By the way, someone who casts their electoral vote for someone other than the candidate they pledged to elect, is called a Faithless Elector. It’s happened 157 times in US history, or so I’m told.
Thanks, Ed. That case did not come up in whatever google search I did. If MS had quoted the actual case, I would not have gone off in that wrong direction.
But to the point I made by quoting The Constitution still holds: how to choose electors is entirely up to each state; but that includes the courts in that state.
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