GOP leaders in 4 states quash president’s bid on electors
Republican leaders in four crucial states won by President-elect Joe Biden said they won’t try to flip their state’s electors to vote for President Donald Trump. Their comments effectively shut down a plot some Republicans floated as a last chance to keep Trump in the White House.
State GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have said they would not intervene in the selection of electors, who ultimately cast the votes that secure a candidate’s victory. Such a move would violate state law and a vote of the people, several noted.
“I do not see, short of finding some type of fraud ... I don’t see us in any serious way addressing a change in electors,” said Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s Republican House speaker, who said he has been inundated with emails pleading for the legislature to intervene. “They are mandated by statute to choose according to the vote of the people.”
The idea loosely involves Gop-controlled legislatures dismissing Biden’s popular vote victories in their states and opting to select Trump electors. Although the endgame was unknown, it appeared to hinge on the expectation that a conservative-leaning Supreme Court would settle any dispute over the move.
Still, it has been promoted by Trump allies, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and is an example of misleading information and false claims fueling skepticism among Trump supporters about the integrity of the vote.
Republicans also suffered setbacks to court challenges over the presidential election in three battleground states on Friday.
In Pennsylvania, a federal appeals court rejected an effort to block about 9,300 mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day. The judges noted the “vast disruption” and “unprecedented challenges” facing the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic as they upheld the three-day extension.
In Michigan, where Biden leads by
more than 140,000 votes, a judge refused to stop the certification of Detroit-area election results, rejecting claims the city had committed fraud and tainted the count with its handling of absentee ballots. And in Arizona, a judge dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit seeking the inspection of ballots in metro Phoenix after the campaign’s attorneys acknowledged the small number of ballots at issue wouldn’t change the outcome.
The electors theory is rooted in the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how electors are chosen. Each state has passed laws that delegate this power to voters and appoint electors for whichever candidate wins the state on Election Day. The only opportunity for a state legislature to then get involved with electors is a provision in federal law allowing it if the actual election “fails.”
If the result of the election was unnknown in mid-december, at the deadline for naming electors, Republican-controlled legislatures in those states could declare that Trump won and appoint electors supporting him. .
The problem, legal experts noted, is that the result of the election is not in any way unknown. Biden won all the states at issue. It’s hard to argue the election “failed” when Trump’s Department of Homeland Security reported it was not tampered with and was “the most secure in American history.” There has been no finding of widespread fraud.