President Donald J. Trump gestures with a fist pump to the crowd of cadets as he arrives Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020, to attend the 121st Army-Navy football game at Michie Stadium at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)
A new election lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., demanding state legislators be allowed to meet and pick their state's electors – before the Electoral College votes are tabulated in Congress next month.
The reasoning is that several governors of states whose 2020 presidential race election results are being challenged have refused permission for their elected representatives to meet, so far.
The case is being brought by the Amistad Project, which already had brought legal challenges to state results in multiple locations.
It now is demanding that legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin be allowed to meet to "certify" their electors before Congress acts. The current total awarded by the media gives Joe Biden 306 electors, while President Trump is given 232.
The foundation for the argument isn't complicated.
The organization earlier explained that while many states allocate their Electoral College votes based on the popular vote totals, the Constitution specifically gives the authority to pick those electors to legislatures.
"Because the U.S. Constitution places ultimate authority for designating presidential Electors in the hands of state legislatures, it is the responsibility of the people’s elected representatives to judge the relevant facts and appoint an appropriate slate of Electors, subject only to the sole deadline set forth in the U.S. Constitution — 12:00 noon on January 20, 2021," the organization explained.
The project, part of the non-partisan Thomas More Society, argues that current federal and local statutes are interfering with state legislatures' constitutional right to certify electors, in a direct violation of the separation of powers.
"Kings and queens dissolve parliaments and legislative bodies, not governors. At least that was the case until this year. Governors in these contested states have declared themselves to be the law due to COVID and are now actively preventing the state legislatures from exercising their constitutional authority to review the election process," said Phill Kline, project director.
It's not on the only time laws apparently have been ignored in the 2020 presidential race. Multiple lawsuits challenging various states' results are based on the fact that while state lawmakers have the authority to establish election laws, in this election state officials, sometimes bureaucrats, sometimes governors and sometimes judges, simply told election officials to ignore the legal requirements to vote.
That resulted, the contention is, in hundreds of thousands of votes that did not meet legal requirements being counted – enough to turn around the result of the current election totals.
"The governor of Pennsylvania is refusing to allow the legislature there to meet, while in Michigan the attorney general is threatening legislators who disagree with certification with criminal investigation, and Gov. Whitmer uses COVID – and later a non-existent threat – as an excuse to prevent Republicans in Michigan legislature from entering the Capitol Building while Democrats were allowed in the building to vote on certification," Kline said.
He said there's been great opposition so far to state legislatures meeting to review, investigate and debate the method in which the election was conducted.
"No one person, or small group of persons, should be able to prohibit the state legislature from performing its constitutional responsibilities," Kline added.
"Unfortunately, current federal and state code has allowed a constitutionally non delegable legislative function and responsibility to become a ministerial process,” said Erick Kaardal, lead attorney for the Amistad Project.
The project already has filed lawsuits in at least five swing states.
And it explained that while federal code provides various election result reporting deadlines, the only one constitutionally imposed is the January 20 deadline for an inauguration.
It explained in a white paper that the U.S. Constitution "is the highest law in the land, holding precedence over both state and federal laws.
"In the event that federal law presents an obstacle to faithfully adhering to constitutional requirements, it is necessary to disregard the statute in favor of the plain meaning of the Constitution."
In its lawsuits challenging the 2020 election outcome, Amistad alleges that illegal conduct by state and local officials led to more than 1.2 million potentially fraudulent ballots, including failing to count legal votes and counting illegal votes.
In each of the states, the number of potentially fraudulent ballots far exceeds the margin separating the leading presidential candidate, Amistad says.
"Through rigorous investigations supporting our litigation, we demonstrate that state and local officials brazenly violated election laws in several swing states in order to advance a partisan political agenda," said Kline. "As a result, it is impossible for those states to determine their presidential Electors in line with the arbitrary deadline set forth via federal statute in 1948, and thus, the only deadline that matters is January 20, 2021."
Among the issues Amistad has identified in the 2020 vote:
- In Arizona millions of dollars in private money was tossed into the election pot, giving "some voters in the state access to advantages that were unavailable to voters in other parts of the state."
- In Georgia, Fulton County officials took more than $6 million in private grants that imposed conditions on the conduct of elections without authority from the state legislature. The state also reached an agreement with Democrats over vote counting that "directly contradict the legislature's intent."
- In Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson gave "private activist organizations direct access to the state's voter files, which should only be accessibly to election clerks." She also broke the state law that requires signatures for absentee ballot requests.
- In Pennsylvania, some counties, including Allegheny, Philadelphia and Delaware, got more than $10 million in private money that put conditions on the election "without legislative approval." And state officials violated the law by giving permission for "unlawful practices."
- In Wisconsin, the law requires photo ID for absentee ballot requests, but the law was ignored in the 2020 election.
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