President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that Vice President Mike Pence could single-handedly reject certain voters during the certification process of Congress and increase the pressure on him to help overthrow the outcome of the 2020 election.
“The vice president has the power to reject fraudulently elected voters,” Trump tweeted.
This is false.
Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, will chair Wednesday’s congressional certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election, as set out in the 12th Amendment. But he can not intervene in the process.
The law governing the certification process, the Electoral Code of 1887, specifically limits the power of the vice president precisely because a vice president intervened in the count earlier. In 1857, after the victory of James Buchanan, a Senate president delayed an objection against the voters in Wisconsin, who were delayed in a snowstorm in 1856, in their certification process.
“One of the points of the Election Act is to restrict the Vice President in this earlier episode and make it clear that he is a chairman and not a casting person,” said Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center, and a former chairman of the Federal, explained. Electoral Commission.
The statement of the score on the election, Potter explained, provides a detailed playbook for how the congressional score is supposed to proceed and it specifically limits the work of the vice president to a ceremonial work.
“It says the vice president will preside and he will see to it that the statements and votes of the states are opened and read out,” Potter said.
Potter is a Republican and serves as general counsel for both President John Campain’s campaigns.
The president and his supporters have been trying for months to question and overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. Biden, who won Electoral College 306-232, will be sworn in as the 46th president on January 20.
Trump’s campaign and supporters have filed dozens of charges, only to be dropped for lack of evidence or status.
A federal district court in Washington recently ruled against a recent attempt by Trump supporters against Pence, Congress and the Electoral College, which wanted to stop certifying Biden’s victory.
Plaintiff’s theory ‘lies somewhere between a deliberate misreading of the Constitution and fantasy’, a judge ruled Monday, denying the denial.
Trump also called on Republican members to oppose the certification in Congress, despite the fact that the attempt was certainly doomed to fail – both chambers must agree to cast a state’s voters and Democrats control the House of Representatives.
Potter believed that if Pence tried to disregard the law and intervene, he would have to argue that the Electoral College Act was unconstitutional in some way.
“What any historian would tell you is nuts,” he told NBC News. “No one intended the vice president to be the king.”
