WASHINGTON, D.C. — A group of Republican legislators led by U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert is suing Vice President Mike Pence, hoping that it will end up allowing Pence to choose which electoral votes should count from states in which President Donald Trump lost.
The suit is the latest attempt by Trump supporters in Congress to undermine the results of the November, election, which Democrat Joe Biden won with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. The Electoral College ratified the vote on Dec. 14 and the results will be sent to Washington and tallied in a Jan. 6 joint session of Congress over which Pence will preside.
The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, is challenging Pence’s role in the session, which largely is ceremonial, the Dallas Morning News reports. Supporters want a judge to toss out the 1887 federal law known as the Electoral Count Act, saying it’s unconstitutional, KHOU Channel 11 reports.
Legal experts say the lawsuit has no chance of succeeding, the Morning News reports.
“If the 12th Amendment somehow gave the vice president the power to unilaterally throw out electoral votes for the other guy in favor of their own party (and even themselves), one might think that one of them would’ve noticed by now,” Steven Vladeck, professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said in a tweet. “But I guess they were all just idiots.”
“No, this won’t work,” Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, tweeted.
The Morning News says Gohmert is one of several Republican House members, including Ohio’s Jim Jordan, who say they will challenge the Electoral College results on Jan. 6.
The last time such an objection was considered was 2005, led by Democrats Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California. But Tubbs Jones, who died in 2008, had a different motive. Rather than seeking to overturn the election, she delayed the official presidential vote to highlight problems that plagued Ohio’s 2004 election, such as computer glitches, long voting waits in Cuyahoga County, and questions about procedures used to reject provisional ballots.
A lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general challenging the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 11. Dozens of lawsuits filed by lawyers for Trump also have been rejected by federal judges.
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GOP legislators sue Mike Pence in latest effort to undo election results - cleveland.com
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