"Republicans screwed up. They set some very bad precedents. Loyalty to their president made Republicans abandon their own principles.
A majority of House Republicans voted not to accept electors selected by Pennsylvania voters. They demonstrated state elections can be second-guessed. There is no safe harbor for states.
Democrats are stepping up to provide one.
Republicans decided to echo Trump, not tradition. Following the November 3 vote, most GOP officeholders didn't console their disappointed voters and talk of the next election. They echoed Trump and cheered his talk of circumventing or voiding the election by whatever means necessary.
They looked for entry points to challenge the election. Recounts did not change the unwelcome result. Nor did audits and hand-recounts. Lawsuits claiming fraud failed for lack of evidence. Voter certifiers did their jobs, as did secretaries of state and governors and judges. Frustration all around.
The claim that Vice President Mike Pence could simply choose to accept some votes and not others was understood by officeholders to be a desperate ploy. It would get immediate objection on Constitutional grounds and throw things to a presumably compliant Supreme Court, which might find a way to decide for Trump, but probably would not. But possibly it would create enough chaos and street violence that in an emergency of disorder Congress would try to sort things out, which would fail because of stalemate. Then the House of Representatives might choose the president, one delegation to each state, with Trump the winner.
There was a better, more reliable path, one that did not assert that Vice Presidents chose presidents. The big opportunity for Republican officeholders was to assert that the Congress was the real arbiter of elections. The idea was that members of the House and Senate could decide which electors they thought legitimate, if a state chose to submit two slates of electors. Members of Congress had no obligation to choose the one the state submited. Their power was absolute. Seven Republican senators, and 147 Republican House members--a majority of the party caucus--decided that Pennsylvania or Arizona's elections didn't pass muster.
They are on record. States are on notice. Election results that disappoint one party in Congress are at risk, doubly so if that party has a majority in one or both chambers. Elections are suggestions. Congress decides.
In 2020 the issues on the table were election as justification for choosing a slate were electoral procedures. In Oregon (as in Utah, California and Washington) elections are universal vote by mail, a procedure that Trump called fraudulent per se. GOP officeholders echoed that idea: Mail balloting was suspect and worse. Every state made election decisions that could be questioned later--procedures on voter registration, voter roll cleanup, absentee balloting, ballot design, early voting, numbers of polling stations, paper backup, software choices, and more. All these were a basis for having an election result voided. The risk was not theoretical; it was all-too real, happening after the 2020 election.
Democrats are pushing to make voting easier to do, by allowing on-line registration, voting by absentee ballot, and making election day a federal holiday. They would codify as allowable, or required, some of the changes that took place to address the COVID epidemic. Until recently, Republicans, too, wanted voting to be easier to do by accommodating people who travel, who are temporarily out of state, who have mobility issues or work schedule conflicts. Republicans had traditionally used organized absentee balloting as a Get Out The Vote technique--especially in Florida, where Trump voted absentee. That has changed. In recent years the GOP has taken the position that more votes mean more Democratic votes, and that absentee voting favored Democrats. The lawyer for the Republican Party openly told Supreme Court that the Republican interest was in making voting more difficult. ABC reported:
What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?" Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked, referencing legal standing.
“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” said Michael Carvin, the lawyer defending the state's restrictions. “Politics is a zero-sum game."
Under law and tradition, states operate elections. States with Republican legislatures are attempting to pass new rules that will improve "election security" by reducing voter access. Democrats are pushing the opposite direction. The House just passed HR-1, a bill to require states to implement a series of procedures increasing voter access. Republicans opposed it. "Basically, Speaker Pelosi just wants to federalize elections," said Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, one of the senators who voted to reject the Pennsylvania electors.
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| Louisiana Senator John Kennedy |
The Republican argument of "states' rights" on elections has been weakened by their objections to the 2020 vote. Voters got a lesson that states cannot be trusted to run elections. Trump and Republican officeholders said state elections are suspect. State judges couldn't be trusted to understand their own laws. They said Congress needed to step into the void.
It may not matter. Hypocrisy and inconsistency have little political bite in an era defined by team loyalty, not political principle. This is Congress, not a graduate seminar on ethics. The pole star is not federalism or states' rights or the personal satisfaction of being consistent from one month to the next. It is to win.
In January, Republicans asserted power of Congress to void state elections. In March they defend states' power to choose their own election procedures.
2 comments:
I see a future inflection point around the first of the year.
As candidates suit up for the primaries they will have their fingers in the air. Trump's 2021 fortunes will have a big effect on their decisions. The problem here is that abandoning Trump at any moment prior to sentencing will require them to express principles which so far hasn't been evident.
It seems pretty straightforward. Since Republicans aren't really for anything, but simply against whatever Democrats propose it's incumbent on Democrats to simply be competent and allow the Republicans to look deranged (which they are). So far they are cooperating. The problem for them is that states will resist voter suppression with grass roots efforts to get out the vote, using that very suppression as an issue. Democratic candidates will hammer home the undemocratic, possibly unconstitutional moves, instigate lawsuits and generally paint Republicans as the fascistic sociopaths they are. It will work.
By the way, Cuomo should resign...zero tolerance, folks. He was an accident waiting to happen, and a lesson in hubris. Modern candidates keep their hands to themselves and watch what they say.
Rick, I was with you until the statement on Cuomo. Remember Al Franken? He was forced to resign for the pettiest of offenses. As a female who used to be exposed to all sorts of come-ons and sexual aggressions, I see the difference in what he did. He did not do any really forced aggression. He has apologized. He won't do it again. Other issues about him might be more serious, like the coverups.
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