Many Republican congressmen and senators will want to, or feel pressure to, object to the Joe Biden votes cast by electors from Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, or Arizona. That’s not because the results in those states are seriously in doubt or because there’s real reason to suspect the election was stolen.
Donald Trump hasn’t accepted his election loss, and so many hangers-on and scared, sycophantic, or cynical members of Congress have played along. Some push unproven and disproven conspiracy theories to try and make the case that Trump really won. Others present a weaker but less crazy justification for their actions, something along the lines of “we shouldn’t certify results until we know exactly how much fraud was or exactly what was in that suitcase or …”
And in so doing, Republicans are adopting the same Michael Moore-inspired tactics of Democrats that the GOP roundly derided during the Bush years and taking them to far more cynical levels.
Democrats, of course, never accept it when Republicans win elections. In 2000, Democratic congressmen called George W. Bush’s win a “coup d’etat” and unfailingly pushed the false claim that the Supreme Court “appointed” Bush president. Trump’s 2016 win was “illegitimate,” according to Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and respected liberal publications peddled a story that Russians had hacked voting machines and stole the election.
And, in 2004, when Bush won the national popular vote 51% to 48% and carried Ohio by more than 100,000 votes, Democrats threw a protest on the House floor.
Under the Constitution, Congress is the ultimate arbiter of the presidential election. On Jan. 5 after a presidential election, it counts and ratifies the Electoral College’s votes. If a state were to send two competing slates of electors, or if there were widespread fraud proven, or if some horrific technical error were discovered, Congress could throw out a state’s electoral votes.
The process for this is that if a House member and a senator both object, there is a debate and a vote. In 2000, many House Democrats objected to Florida’s electoral votes going to Bush, but no senator objected. Democratic senators were excoriated for this. Barney Frank said the Senate Democrats refused to object because they were all white. Moore, in Fahrenheit 9/11, made the Senate Democrats the villains.
So, in 2004, when Ohio’s Stephanie Tubbs Jones objected to Ohio’s electors, who, of course, voted for Bush because Bush won by more than 100,000 votes in Ohio, Barbara Boxer seconded the objection.
The result was a farce. Democrats knew Bush won Ohio’s electors, but dozens of them, led by Jones and Boxer, still asserted, through their votes and their motions, that Bush hadn’t won Ohio fair and square. In effect, they were lying.
During the debate that followed on the House floor, Democrats didn’t try to claim the election was stolen. Most of them also didn’t grant that Bush really won Ohio. They mostly admitted that they weren’t going to overturn the election results, which is sort of a weaselly hedge — it allows for the possibility the election was stolen but admits you lack the power to prove it.
The point of the whole affair was trying to poison the well for Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell because he was a black conservative Republican.
. . .
There is no evidence of large-scale fraud or error that could come even close to flipping any of Biden’s states to Trump. The Electoral College votes of all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., were all cast validly. Congress should ratify them all, rather than play-act as slightly crazier versions of Waters.
Dear Republicans in Congress: Please don’t become Barbara Boxer or Maxine Waters