Fewer nonetheless perceive why former President Donald Trump and Republicans persist of their long-disproven declare that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. A lot much less why they’re obsessed about making the 2024 race a referendum on the “stolen” election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen.
January 6 was by no means a couple of stolen election and even about precise voting fraud. It was all the time and solely about an election that Trump misplaced honest and sq., underneath legislatively promulgated election guidelines in a handful of swing states that he and different Republicans contend have been unlawfully modified by state election officers and state courts to develop the precise and alternative to vote, largely in response to the Covid pandemic.
The Republicans’ mystifying declare to at the present time that Trump did, or would have, obtained extra votes than Joe Biden in 2020 have been it not for precise voting fraud, is however the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled earlier than the American public for nearly a yr and a half now to distract consideration from their way more formidable goal.
That goal just isn’t one way or the other to rescind the 2020 election, as they’d have us imagine. That is constitutionally unimaginable. Trump’s and the Republicans’ way more formidable goal is to execute efficiently in 2024 the exact same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses once more within the subsequent quadrennial contest.
The final presidential election was a dry run for the following.
From lengthy earlier than Election Day 2020, Trump and Republicans deliberate to overturn the presidential election by exploiting the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Structure, the Electoral Faculty, the Electoral Depend Act of 1877, and the twelfth Modification, if Trump misplaced the favored and Electoral Faculty vote.
Trump and the Republicans started executing this primary stage of their plan months earlier than November 3, by difficult as violative of the unbiased state legislature doctrine election guidelines referring to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and occasions, mail-in ballots, and different election legislation adjustments that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officers and state courts in swing states resembling Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court docket’s indecision on that doctrine, Trump and the Republicans turned their efforts to the second stage of their plan, exploitation of the Electoral Faculty and the Electoral Depend Act.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court docket within the first stage, foiled by their incapacity to provide you with various state electoral slates within the second stage, and with time operating out, Trump and the Republicans started executing the ultimate choice of their plan, which was to scare up illegitimate various electoral slates in numerous swing states to be transmitted to Congress. Whereupon, on January 6, Vice President Pence would depend solely the votes of the illegitimate electors from the swing states, and never the votes of the reliable, licensed electors that have been solid for Biden, and declare Donald Trump’s reelection as President of america.
Pence declared Joe Biden the forty sixth President of america at 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, January 7, roughly 14 hours after rioters stormed the US Capitol, disrupting the Joint Session and stopping Congress from counting the Electoral Faculty votes for president till late that night time and into the next day, after the statutorily designated day for counting these votes.
Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states started readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that exact same day they usually have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Right this moment, they’re already a great distance towards recapturing the White Home in 2024, whether or not Trump or one other Republican candidate wins the election or not.
Trump and Republicans are getting ready to return to the Supreme Court docket, the place this time they are going to seemingly win the unbiased state legislature doctrine, now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the Court docket and able to vote. Barrett has not addressed the problem, however this activates an originalist interpretation of the Structure, and Barrett is firmly aligned on that technique of constitutional interpretation with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, all three of whom have written that they imagine the doctrine is right.
Lastly, they’re furiously politicking to elect Trump supporters to the Senate and Home, to allow them to overturn the election in Congress, as a final resort.
Forewarned is to be forearmed.
Trump and the Republicans can solely be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this level if the Supreme Court docket rejects the unbiased state legislature doctrine (thus permitting state court docket enforcement of state constitutional limitations on legislatively enacted election guidelines and elector appointments) and Congress amends the Electoral Depend Act to constrain Congress’ personal energy to reject state electoral votes and determine the presidency.
Though the Vice President will probably be a Democrat in 2024, each events additionally have to enact federal laws that expressly limits the vp’s energy to be coextensive with the ability accorded the vp within the twelfth Modification and make sure that it’s largely ceremonial, as Pence construed it to be on January 6.
Vice President Kamala Harris would preside over the Joint Session in 2024. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have any thought who will probably be presiding after that, nonetheless. Thus, each events have the motivation to make clear the vp’s ceremonial function now.
Because it stands at the moment, Trump, or his anointed successor, and the Republicans are poised, of their phrase, to “steal” from Democrats the presidential election in 2024 that they falsely declare the Democrats stole from them in 2020. However there’s a distinction between the falsely claimed “stolen” election of 2020 and what could be the stolen election of 2024. Not like the Democrats’ theft claimed by Republicans, the Republicans’ theft could be in open defiance of the favored vote and thus the desire of the American folks: poetic, although tragic, irony for America’s democracy.
