Biggs tried to keep your votes from counting

There is an understandable focus on the storming of the Capitol that made the ugly face of Trumpism incontrovertible.

But in addition to that focus, sight should not be lost on the perfidy and betrayal of Republican members of Arizona’s congressional delegation attempting to prevent the state’s Electoral College votes from being counted.

Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar led the effort to render the votes of 3.4 million Arizonans irrelevant regarding who should be president of the United States. Debbie Lesko also voted not to count Arizona’s duly certified Electoral College votes.

Among the state’s GOP delegation, only David Schweikert voted to accept the state’s Electoral College votes. But he doesn’t get a clean pass. Schweikert voted not to accept the votes from Pennsylvania, which was based upon the same bogus theory about the role of Congress in the presidential selection process.

The case made by Biggs not to accept the Arizona electoral college votes is worth a critical examination, since he is a formerly serious person.

The primary argument Biggs advanced was this. Arizona had a statutory deadline to register to vote for this election of Oct. 5. A federal district court judge extended that deadline. The appellate court found that the district judge incorrectly ruled. But allowed registrations after the Oct. 5 deadline until the appellate court ruling, a period of 10 days, to stand.

According to Biggs, this meant that the election was not conducted according to the rules established by the Arizona Legislature, contrary to a U.S. constitutional provision vesting that authority in the various state legislatures.

However, that grant of authority to state legislatures is not exclusive or unlimited. There are federal constitutional and statutory standards with which state voting laws must comply.

The district court judge found that the Arizona registration deadline violated those standards. I agree with Biggs, and the appellate court, that the judge was wrong.

An argument could be made that the appellate court should have invalidated the registrations that occurred between the district court ruling and the overturning of it. But it didn’t.

Court challenges and rulings are part of the legitimate electoral process. The state had no choice but to obey legal rulings as they were rendered. And it did so.

But here is the logical consequence of Biggs’ argument. Once the state obeyed the court rulings, Arizona’s presidential election was invalid and irrelevant regardless of how conducted from that point, because it would not be conducted according to rules established by the Legislature.

In other words, according to Biggs, the only way the state could have conducted a valid presidential election and have its Electoral College votes count was to defy the court orders and invalidate any registrations received after Oct. 5. Suffice to say, that’s not a course compatible with the rule of law.

There is no evidence that the additional registrations allowed according to court orders but after the legislative deadline determined the outcome. In fact, Republicans outperformed Democrats during this additional registration period.

But if it had, that wouldn’t give Congress warrant to refuse to count Arizona’s Electoral College votes. The Constitution doesn’t make Congress the ultimate authority on the legitimacy and legality of the conduct of state elections. Those are challenges to be brought in state and federal courts.

The statutory act which Biggs and Gosar were corrupting was intended to provide a mechanism for Congress to decide between competing claims of legitimate and legal election outcomes.

There was no such competing claim in Arizona, or any other state. Only one set of electors, those pledged to Joe Biden, were duly certified by officers charged by state law to make that certification.

These betrayers claim to be operating in the service of high principle. Biggs issued a press release claiming that he was standing “for election integrity.” Lesko’s proclaimed that she was standing up “for the Constitution.”

The lie of the claim to be motivated by high principle is easily exposed. If Donald Trump had won Arizona by 10,000 votes rather than losing it by that margin, the same alleged flaws in the conduct of Arizona’s election would have existed.

But if Trump had won Arizona following exactly the same procedures, is there anyone who believes that Biggs, Gosar and Lesko would have attempted to prevent Arizona’s Electoral College votes from being counted?

Biggs, Gosar and Lesko were willing to throw out the votes of 3.4 million Arizonans as part of a plot to keep Trump in power.

That’s a stigma that should never be forgotten. It is a stain that can never be erased.