At least 50 Donald Trump electors were illegally seated as Electoral College members

I would be totally astonished if more than a very few, if any, republicans in Congress care. It would be another matter if a Democrat had won the electoral vote under the same circumstances.

Thursday, Jan 5, 2017 07:30 AM EST
At least 50 Donald Trump electors were illegally seated as Electoral College members: report
More evidence surfaces as calls mount to challenge congressional ratification of Electoral College vote
Steven Rosenfeld, Alternet

More than 50 Electoral College members who voted for Donald Trump were ineligible to serve as presidential electors because they did not live in the congressional districts they represented or held elective office in states legally barring dual officeholders.

That stunning finding is among the conclusions of an extensive 1,000-plus page legal briefing prepared by a bipartisan nationwide legal team for members of Congress who are being urged to object to certifying the 2016 Electoral College results on Friday.

“Trump’s ascension to the presidency is completely illegitimate,” said Ryan Clayton of Americans Take Action, who is promoting the effort. “It’s not just Russians hacking our democracy. It’s not just voter suppression at unprecedented levels. It is also [that] there are Republicans illegally casting ballots in the Electoral College, and in a sufficient number that the results of the Electoral College proceedings are illegitimate as well.”

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“Republicans like to talk all the time about people voting illegally,” Clayton continued. “We have a list of a bunch of Republicans that allegedly voted illegally in the Electoral College. Pam Bondi is the attorney general of the state of Florida and the Florida Constitution says that you cannot hold two offices. And she holds the office of Attorney General and she holds the office of federal elector in the Electoral College. That is a violation of the law. That is a violation of the Constitution. And the vote that she cast in this election is illegal.”

A joint congressional session is scheduled to ratify the 2016 Electoral College vote this Friday.

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Clayton is hoping that sufficient numbers of Republicans in Congress will not vote to ratify the Electoral College results, thus depriving Trump of the 270 Electoral College votes he needs to win the presidency. If that transpires, the House would then decide between the three top Electoral College vote-getters—Trump, Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell, he said. But before any of that can happen, there needs to be a formal challenge to ratifying the 2016 Electoral College results in Friday’s joint session of Congress, which is where the research finding that scores of Trump votes were illegally cast comes in.

“We have reason to believe that there are at least 50 electoral votes that were not regularly given or not lawfully certified (16 Congressional District violations and 34 Dual Office-Holder violations),” the executive summary of the Electoral Vote Objection Packet said. “The number could be over a hundred. We urge you to prepare written objections for January 6.”

“The compiling of the laws and evidence in this Electoral Vote Objection Package was completed by a national team of roughly 15 pro bono attorneys, law students, and legal assistants who represent no client or entity,” the summary said. “We are non-partisan—Democrat, Republican, and Independent. We live in different parts of the country, urban and rural, red states and blue states.”

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The process for challenging the Electoral College vote is two-fold. First, a House member has to file a formal challenge and objection. Then one House member and one senator has to sign on, prompting each body to retire to their chambers for the two-hour debate.

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It may be that the efforts to convince Congress to challenge the ratification of the 2016 Electoral College amounts to little more than a Hail Mary aimed at derailing a Trump presidency. As of late Wednesday, Clayton thought there would be House members willing to object to certifying the Electoral College vote, but he was less certain about finding a senator willing to go along.

But even if a challenge is mounted and fails, it underscores the illegitimate basis of Trump’s presidency and the deep opposition to it, and refutes the GOP’s outrageous claim that it has a mandate for dismantling government programs across the board.

“We have a list of 50 illegal electors,” Clayton said. “That puts Donald Trump below the threshold that he needs to be elected president. Let’s debate it in an open session. According to the Constitution, the Congress, if nobody wins on the first round of balloting, picks from the top three candidates. That will be Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Colin Powell.”