Challenging the presidential election isn’t treason

Nobody condones the storming of the U.S. Capitol building last week. President Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility for sparking the chaos.

But we’re walking a scary line in America when we say lawmakers lodging perfectly legal objections to a presidential election are traitors who are suborning insurrection against our country.

Given the chaos we saw last Wednesday, a lot of people have rushed to lump every election objector in the Senate and House in with the mob.

They will tell you that every lawmaker who voted to object to certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win was inciting a coup. Don’t you believe it.

It wasn’t the lawmakers and their objections who were responsible for the chaos at the U.S. Capitol. It was the fault of Trump, for riling his supporters up and then returning to the White House to watch the conflagration on television as if he had nothing to do with it.

The chaos was the fault of those protesters who breached the very seat of American democracy, leaving death, injury and vandalism in their wake.

Challenges are perfectly legal under the law. Democrats in the House in 2016 tried unsuccessfully to challenge

Trump’s election. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-calif., challenged some of President George W. Bush’s electoral votes in 2005.

None of these challenges changed the outcome of a presidential election. And nothing was going to change the outcome of the 2020 race. Trump had exhausted his legal challenges and the electors had met to cast their votes. The counting in Congress was a mere formality, as it always is.

And after the carnage we saw at the U.S. Capitol, it was even less likely that any electoral challenge would pass.

You could argue Republican objectors should have just stood down and bowed to the inevitable: Biden would be declared the winner of the White House. They should have counted themselves lucky to have escaped the mayhem and tabled their objections.

I would have. It was more than plain that any high ground that had once existed, and it was very scant real estate to begin with, was utterly destroyed by the actions of the Capitol mob.

But objections were lodged and voted upon. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-staten Island/ Brooklyn, was among the 148 Republicans who voted in favor.

You can question their wisdom in carrying on with any challenges given what had happened at the Capitol. You can accuse them of cravenly pandering to Trump voters back home. You can say they should be ashamed of themselves. You can work to defeat them when they’re up for reelection. You can call on them to resign.

But you can’t call them traitors. You can’t put them on trial. What they did was perfectly legal.

If you don’t like the law, change the law. But don’t get the pitchforks and torches out.

Challenges are perfectly legal under the law.