By Ted Noel
\nAmerican Thinker<\/p>\n
On January 6, a joint session of Congress will open with Vice President Pence presiding as president of the Senate.\u00a0\u00a0His power will be plenary and unappealable.\u00a0\u00a0You heard that right.\u00a0\u00a0As president of the Senate, every objection comes directly to him, and he can rule any objection “out of order” or “denied.”\u00a0\u00a0His task will be to fulfill his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed.\u00a0\u00a0This is a high standard of performance, and V.P. Pence will have two choices.\u00a0\u00a0He can roll over on “certified” electors, or he can uphold the law.<\/p>\n
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution gives state legislatures “plenary authority” as enunciated in Bush v. Gore<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0This is key, since the counting of votes is discussed in Article II, the 12th Amendment, and 3 USC 15.\u00a0\u00a0To this we must add the history of counting and objections recounted by Alexander Macris (here<\/a> and here<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0Put bluntly, it’s as clear as mud.\u00a0\u00a0Add to that the fact that the contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have sent dueling slates of electors to D.C.\u00a0\u00a0This means that the V.P. has to decide how he will handle the situation when two sealed envelopes are handed to him from any of those states.<\/p>\n Macris points out<\/a> that in 1800, even with constitutional deficiencies in Georgia<\/em>, Thomas Jefferson blithely counted defective electoral votes from Georgia, effectively voting himself into the presidency.\u00a0\u00a0This demonstrates that the president of the Senate is the final authority on any motions or objections during the vote-counting.\u00a0\u00a0There is no appeal.\u00a0\u00a0That doesn’t mean there won’t be any outrage.\u00a0\u00a0Whatever Pence does, people will be angry.\u00a0\u00a0But what does the law demand?<\/p>\n Seven contested states clearly violated their own laws.\u00a0\u00a0Rather than list the facts, which have been detailed in multiple articles, we must consider the following:<\/p>\n An election is a process of counting votes for candidates. Only valid, lawful votes may be counted.\u00a0\u00a0A valid lawful vote is:<\/p>\n Any process that does not follow these rules is not an election<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Anything that proceeds from it cannot be regarded as having any lawful import.<\/p>\n Most commentators suggest that a process of collecting pieces of paper with marks on them is an election regardless of errors, omissions, and even deliberate malfeasance.\u00a0\u00a0This is a mistake.\u00a0\u00a0Imagine a golf tournament where every bad shot by one player gets a do-over, but the competing player has to follow USGA rules in detail.\u00a0\u00a0One player gets to drop freely out of hazards, but the other has to tackle every embedded ball as it lies.\u00a0\u00a0The result is a travesty.<\/p>\n The same thing applies to elections.\u00a0\u00a0If there are a handful of improper votes, we can suggest that there was in fact an election, perhaps tainted, but the election wasn’t materially harmed.\u00a0\u00a0But when the people charged with managing the election decide to ignore the law, whatever process they supervise is not the process defined by the law.\u00a0\u00a0Therefore, it is not an election.<\/p>\n This leaves V.P. Pence with a dilemma.\u00a0\u00a0He is a gentleman who regards our governmental traditions with a degree of reverence, so he will be reluctant to take any bold action.\u00a0\u00a0But as an honorable man, faced with massive illegality, he must act to protect the law.\u00a0\u00a0Consider how things might go down as the two closed envelopes from Georgia are handed to the V.P.\u00a0\u00a0Rather than opening them, he says:<\/p>\n In my hand are envelopes purporting to contain electoral votes from Georgia.\u00a0\u00a0They are competing for consideration, so it is essential that I consider the law that governs this.\u00a0\u00a0That law, according to the Legislature of Georgia and Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution is the Georgia statute that includes procedures for signature-matching on absentee ballots, a requirement that all absentee ballots be first requested by a legitimate voter, and that election monitors be meaningfully present at all times while votes were counted. <\/em><\/p>\n The Georgia secretary of state, who is not empowered by the U.S. Constitution to make changes to election law, entered into a Consent Decree that gutted these protections enacted by the Georgia Legislature.\u00a0\u00a0The processes that he prescribed and were ultimately followed were manifestly contrary to that law.\u00a0\u00a0Further, the State of Georgia, in unprecedented concert with other states, suspended counting of ballots in the middle of the night, covering its conspiracy with a false claim of a “water main break.”\u00a0\u00a0We now know from surveillance video that many thousands of “ballots” were counted unlawfully in the absence of legally required observers.<\/em><\/p>\n Finally, the State of Georgia, under the authority of secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a non-legislative actor, used fatally flawed Dominion voting machines that have been demonstrated to be unreliable.\u00a0\u00a0In testing, the error rate of Dominion machines has exceeded 60%, far in excess of legal limits.\u00a0\u00a0They are designed to facilitate fraud without creating the legally required paper trail.\u00a0\u00a0This alone is far more than enough to swing an election.<\/em><\/p>\n Since the state of Georgia has failed to follow the election law established by its legislature under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, <\/em>it has not conducted a presidential election.\u00a0\u00a0Therefore, no “presidential electors” were appointed in Georgia.\u00a0\u00a0Further, “electors” “certified” by non-legislative actors pursuant to this process are in fact <\/em>not “presidential electors.”\u00a0\u00a0The competing slate of “electors” is similarly deficient, having not been elected through a presidential election.<\/em><\/p>\n Therefore, the chair rules that Georgia has not transmitted the votes of any presidential electors to this body.\u00a0\u00a0Georgia presents zero votes for Donald Trump and zero votes for Joseph Biden.<\/em><\/p>\n\n