The lawsuit seeks damages against 10 Republicans the Electoral College delegates say were put on an unauthorized slate of electors to cast votes for Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence despite President Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
One of the very first challenges to the Electoral College system was filed by a California lawyer named John Birke, seeking a restraining order to bar all members of the Electoral College from voting for Trump.
Among those leading the litigation is David Boies, a prominent lawyer who represented Gore in the U.S. Supreme Court case that settled the disputed 2000 election in favor of Bush. “Under the winner-take-all system, U.S. citizens have been denied their constitutional right to an equal vote in Presidential elections,” Boies said in a statement.
Lawyers around the country have been filing motions either arguing that the Electoral College dilutes their votes or challenging state laws that force electors to throw all of their votes to the winner of their state.
Either way, it appears, according to historical president, to include Jefferson himself and his actions, that Mike Pence could very well be the one who shuts this down by using his Constitutional authority to only open and count Trump electors and there is nothing anyone can do about it, if that is the case. see more.
If Xiden is selected, not elected, he will never, ever be my president elect, president, or anything other than an illegal, unconstitutional occupier of a then defunct office of a non-existent country.
Additionally, Republicans in Pennsylvania and Arizona have asked the U.S. Congress not to accept the votes assigned by the state’s Secretary of State, suggesting they represent fraudulent election results.
Losers of elections always complain but never want to change anything to improve the laws around them.
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, is making a last-ditch effort to change the result of the 2020 presidential election by suing Vice President Mike Pence with the aim of having him declare President Trump the victor when he announces the winner of the electoral college vote on Jan. 6.
The Electoral Counting Act details a process of handling objections to votes that involves both the House and Senate. Gohmert's complaint, filed Sunday in Texas federal court, claims that constitutionally it should only be the House to do this.
"In fact, the rampant fraud and unconstitutional actions that took place were so egregious that seven contested states--Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all sent dueling slates of electors to Congress. This puts Vice President Mike Pence in a position where some argue he has to choose between morality and the law. That is not the case."
Gohmert's lawsuit interprets the 12th Amendment as giving the vice president the power to decide which slate of electors to choose from a state, regardless of which slate's votes were certified by their state.
As the president of the Senate, the vice president has the role of announcing the results after the electoral votes are counted at a joint session of Congress. Gohmert and the slate of Republican electors from Arizona claim that the 12th Amendment gives Pence the right to choose which slate of electors to count from their state – and other states – that had Republicans electors submit votes despite Democratic electors having their votes certified in light of November's general election.
§ 15, describes a process of dealing with objections to announced votes, the only controversy that the 12th Amendment addresses is what happens if there is no majority winner after all votes have been counted.
As for the group of Arizona Republicans, who claimed that Biden's electors in the state were unlawfully certified, Kernodle wrote that they "allege an injury that is not fairly traceable to the Defendant, the Vice President of the United States, and is unlikely to be redressed by the requested relief."
White House counsel Pat Cipollone was also aware it was coming. It's not clear whether Trump, who remains furious at the Justice Department for its perceived inaction on voter fraud, was informed himself.
Gohmert's suit was part of the desperate and extraordinary GOP attempt to overturn the presidential election using baseless and unproven allegations of mass voter fraud and charging that multiple states that President-elect Joe Biden won illegally changed their voting rules due to the pandemic.
House General Counsel Doug Letter filed an amicus brief with the court on Thursday, asking for the Gohmert case to be dismissed, calling it a "radical departure from our constitutional procedures and consistent legislative practices."
Other cases from the President and his allies looking to throw out Biden's victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona are pending on the court's docket. This story has been updated with additional information. CNN's Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.
Pence on Thursday asked Kernodle to reject the case, arguing that the legal issues from Gohmert should be directed to the House and Senate, rather than the vice president. Pence's filing did not say if he would entertain the possibility of interfering in the Electoral College count, but there is no public indication that he will.
Kernodle, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed in the Senate by voice vote in 2018, wrote that Gohmert "alleges at most an institutional injury to the House of Representatives. Under well-settled Supreme Court authority, that is insufficient to support standing.".