Tennessee: ‘A dark day for America’: State lawmakers condemn rioters storming US Capitol | Yue Stella Yu and Natalie Allison/Nashville Tennessean

Tennessee’s congressional delegation condemned the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, bringing a joint session of Congress to a halt and forcing lawmakers and staff into lockdown. Most of Tennessee’s Republican delegation began the day vowing to support President Donald Trump’s futile efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, saying they would not certify several states’ Electoral College votes. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn on Wednesday morning tweeted that “lots of Tennesseans” had traveled to the nation’s Capitol to support Trump. But after rioters breached the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday afternoon, the lawmaker’s tenor changed. After years of encouraging Trump supporters and repeating his false statements, Tennessee’s two U.S. Senators used social media to say they disapproved of the rioting. “You are disrupting the democratic process,” Blackburn tweeted after rioters breached the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday afternoon. “You should be ashamed of yourself. This is violence. This is a crime. It must stop.” Newly sworn-in U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, who replaced former U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, also condemned the violence on Wednesday. “What is happening at the U.S. Capitol right now is not peaceful, this is violence,” Hagerty said on Twitter. “I condemn it in the strongest terms. We are a nation of laws and this must stop.”

Full Article: Protest at U.S. Capitol: Tennessee delegates on lockdown, riots

Utah: Protesters outside the Capitol in Salt Lake City prompt the building to be evacuated | Taylor Stevens , Bryan Schott , Bethany Rodgers and Sara Tabin/Salt Lake Tribune

About 400 pro-Trump demonstrators turned up on Utah’s Capitol Hill on Wednesday to show their continued loyalty to the White House occupant who so far as refused to accept his reelection defeat. The protest in Salt Lake City was one of more than a dozen at state Capitols around the nation, according to news reports. But…

National: After years of fealty, Pence prepares for a final performance likely to anger Trump | Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post

Vice President Pence and his team have huddled for hours with the Senate parliamentarian. They have studied historical examples of other vice presidents who have presided over election results. And they have begun anticipating the ire of President Trump — likely to come in the form of angry tweets — in the aftermath of Wednesday’s certification of the electoral college vote count before a joint session of Congress. The role of Pence, who will preside over the certification, is largely ceremonial, one of the few official duties of the vice president in his capacity as president of the Senate. But Trump’s continued and baseless insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election has thrust Pence into a vise between the Constitution he swore to uphold and the president he has promised his fealty. Pence’s performance Wednesday in the Senate chamber will serve as a fitting coda for a vice president who — through a combination of deference, obsequiousness and studied self-effacement — has made navigating the whims and loyalty requirements of his mercurial boss a full-time pursuit. Pence’s team views the vice president’s role as procedural and limited, not unlike an umpire calling balls and strikes but ultimately hemmed in by the rules of the game. Trump, meanwhile, has expressed a desire for Pence to use Wednesday’s session to overturn the election results and snatch victory from President-elect Joe Biden — a stunning subversion of democracy that Pence has no authority to carry out, even if he so desired.

Full Article: After years of fealty, Pence prepares for a final performance likely to anger Trump – The Washington Post

Editorial: Never Forget the Names of These Republicans Attempting a Coup | Thomas L. Friedman/The New York Times

The New Testament asks us in Mark 8:36: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul?” Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson and all their fellow G.O.P. coup plotters clearly have forgotten that verse — if they ever knew it — for they are ready to sacrifice their souls, the soul of their party and the soul of America — our tradition of free and fair elections as the means for peacefully transferring power — so that Donald Trump can remain president and one of these sleazebags can eventually replace him. The governing “philosophy” of these unprincipled Trump-cult Republicans is unmistakably clear: “Democracy is fine for us as long as it is a mechanism for us to be in control. If we can’t hold power, then to hell with rules and to hell with the system. Power doesn’t flow from the will of the people — it flows from our will and our leader’s will.” For America to be healthy again, decent Republicans — in office and in business — need to break away from this unprincipled Trump-cult G.O.P. and start their own principled conservative party. It is urgent. Even if only a small group of principled, center-right lawmakers — and the business leaders who fund them — broke away and formed their own conservative coalition, they would become hugely influential in today’s closely divided Senate. They could be a critical swing faction helping to decide which Biden legislation passes, is moderated or fails.

Full Article: Opinion | Never Forget the Names of These Republicans Attempting a Coup – The New York Times

National: Trump Says Pence Can Overturn His Loss in Congress. That’s Not How It Works. | Michael S. Schmidt/The New York Times

President Trump on Tuesday escalated his efforts to force Vice President Mike Pence to overturn President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, falsely asserting that Mr. Pence had the power to unilaterally throw out electoral votes on Wednesday when Congress meets to certify the election results. But there is nothing in the Constitution or the law that explicitly gives a vice president that power, and aides close to Mr. Pence, who concede that he is facing a politically perilous moment, are convinced he will follow the normal procedures and confirm Mr. Biden’s election. Still, most agree that Wednesday promises to be a long and confusing day on Capitol Hill — and a potentially agonizing one for Mr. Pence — as Mr. Trump’s Republican allies move to challenge Mr. Biden’s victory and force at least three votes on the matter, all expected to fail. The proceeding will test what had long been considered little more than a paperwork exercise in American democracy: the official count by Congress of electoral votes. The vice president’s role is to be the master of ceremonies rather than arbiter of the outcome, declaring the winner based on who has the most electoral votes. But despite Mr. Trump’s clear loss to Mr. Biden, the president and a group of loyalist House and Senate Republicans are plotting to upend the process by objecting to the certification of several states. Lacking the votes to prevail, Mr. Trump is now pressuring Mr. Pence to take matters into his own hands to delay the vote tabulation or alter it in Mr. Trump’s favor.

Full Article: Trump Pressures Pence to Reject Electoral Votes – The New York Times

National: Trump leans harder on Pence to flip election results, even though he lacks that power | Shannon Pettypiece, Monica Alba, Alex Moe and Kristen Welker/NBC

President Donald Trump turned up the pressure Tuesday to enlist Vice President Mike Pence in a futile effort to reverse the presidential election and keep them in office for four more years. With a president who has excelled at remaining the focus of Washington, Pence has largely played the role of quiet support character, never publicly rebuking his boss and sticking to his script with unwavering consistency. But Trump’s effort to keep from being evicted from the White House on Jan. 20 has pushed Pence into the limelight and left him in a position that a person close to Trump said he is “dreading.” Pence has a constitutional role in officially making President-elect Joe Biden the commander-in-chief. On Wednesday, he will be responsible for overseeing Congress’ count of the Electoral College votes submitted by the states. A group of Republican lawmakers have announced that they plan to object, although they are unlikely to succeed in throwing out the Biden votes.

Full Article: Trump leans harder on Pence to flip election results, even though he lacks that power

National: Pence Said to Have Told Trump He Lacks Power to Change Election Result | Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni/The New York Times

Vice President Mike Pence told President Trump on Tuesday that he did not believe he had the power to block congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the presidential election despite Mr. Trump’s baseless insistence that he did, people briefed on the conversation said. Mr. Pence’s message, delivered during his weekly lunch with…

National: With brazen assault on election, Trump prompts critics to warn of a coup | David Nakamura/The Washington Post

During four years in office, President Trump has trampled political norms, attacked democratic institutions, sought to discredit government agencies, peddled baseless conspiracy theories and been impeached by the House. Since his defeat in the November election, Trump’s critics have warned that his scorched-earth effort to invalidate the outcome amounts to a new level of danger: the first attempted coup d’etat in U.S. history to illegally maintain power. The chorus of alarm grew this week after the disclosure that Trump bullied and threatened Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in an hour-long private phone call Saturday, during which the president demanded that Raffensperger find thousands of votes for Trump that do not exist. On social media, conservative and liberal pundits alike used the word “coup.” So did former George W. Bush aide Nicolle Wallace, Trump biographer Timothy L. O’Brien, political analyst Larry Sabato and Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster and founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative. The Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Nation, Vanity Fair, New York magazine and the BBC have invoked the term to explore the ramifications of Trump’s assault on the nation’s democratic foundations.

Full Article: Trump’s assault on election prompts critics to warn of a coup – The Washington Post

National: Cleta Mitchell, Lawyer on Trump Election Call, Quits Firm After Uproar | Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman/The New York Times

A lawyer advising President Trump in recent weeks has resigned from her law firm after it was revealed that she participated in the call where Mr. Trump pressured Georgia officials to help him reverse the state’s election results, the firm said in a statement on Tuesday. The lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, has been advising Mr. Trump despite a policy at her firm, Foley & Lardner, that none of its lawyers should represent clients involved in relitigating the presidential election. “Cleta Mitchell has informed firm management of her decision to resign from Foley & Lardner effective immediately,” the firm said in its statement. “Ms. Mitchell concluded that her departure was in the firm’s best interests, as well as in her own personal best interests. We thank her for her contributions to the firm and wish her well.” Ms. Mitchell’s resignation was the latest evidence of the problems Mr. Trump has created for law firms throughout his time in office, as their employees and clients object to ties with the president. In an email to her clients and friends, Ms. Mitchell blamed her departure on “a massive pressure campaign in the last several days mounted by leftist groups via social media and other means against me, my law firm and clients of the law firm.” She vowed to “redouble” her efforts on what she called “election integrity.”

Full Article: Lawyer on Trump Election Call Quits Firm After Uproar – The New York Times

Editorial: Trump’s Raffensperger call is a crime even if he believes his own fantasies | Trevor Potter and Mark Gaber/The Washington Post

President Trump’s call demanding Georgia officials “find 11,780 votes” and reverse the election results in the state was his most brazen abuse of power yet. If Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger didn’t go along with Trump’s scheme and “recalculate” the vote, the president warned, “it’s going to be very costly in many ways,” threatening that Georgia authorities were committing a “criminal offense” by not endorsing Trump’s false voter fraud claims. The president’s conduct violates the letter and spirit of federal and Georgia criminal laws prohibiting attempts to procure false election results and to solicit election fraud. Since then, some experts have raised questions about whether Trump’s attempted bullying can be prosecuted because of a possible lack of “intent.” The thought is: If the president truly believes the false allegations he is spreading, then his request that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes” isn’t an effort to corrupt the election, but rather to “correct” it. That defense may not work for Trump in this case. Although a criminal conviction does require proof of intent — proof Trump knew he was asking for nonexistent votes to be counted in his favor — a person cannot avoid criminal liability by simply deciding to believe fantasy over fact. For example, if a person becomes convinced that she owns her neighbor’s car and is shown the title certificate proving otherwise, she cannot steal the car and escape conviction by feigning she truly believed fiction over fact — at least, not without mounting an insanity defense.

Full Article: Trump’s Raffensperger call is a crime even if he believes his own fantasies – The Washington Post

Editorial: Pence cannot intervene on Trump’s behalf during electoral vote counting | Edward B. Foley/The Washington Post

President Trump seems to believe that Vice President Pence could overturn the election results when he presides over the congressional counting of electoral votes on Wednesday. Trump is wrong, but any attempt by Pence to intervene on behalf of himself and Trump, if it comes to that, would be a constitutional travesty. It won’t work, but it would set a dangerous precedent. “I have to tell you, I hope that our great vice president, our great vice president, comes through for us,” Trump told a crowd in Georgia on Monday night at a rally purportedly for Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler but actually for his own flailing efforts to secure a second term. “He’s a great guy. Because if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much.” On Tuesday, Trump followed up with specifics. “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors,” he tweeted. Pence has no such authority ― nor would Senate president pro tem Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), if Pence doesn’t have the courage to show up and perform his constitutional duty. Not under the Constitution and not under the applicable statute, the 1887 Electoral Count Act. There are reports Pence has told Trump this and will not derail the process. Still, until Congress declares Biden the winner, American democracy is facing its greatest challenge since the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. Here is what’s supposed to happen when Congress meets on Wednesday. Under the Electoral Count Act, Congress has promised to accept as “conclusive” any state’s “final determination” of litigation over the appointment of its electors. Consequently, this year the process should be straightforward: There is no doubt about how any state resolved the lawsuits that the Trump campaign and its allies filed to challenge the appointment of electors. Trump lost. Joe Biden’s wins were certified. All that remains — or should — is the ceremonial tallying of those votes.

Full Article: Opinion | Pence cannot intervene on Trump’s behalf during electoral vote counting – The Washington Post

Editorial: My Republican colleagues’ ploy threatens the future of the electoral college | Rep. Ken Buck/The Washington Post

Democrats in Congress wrote the playbook for how to dispute an election’s outcome. Republican members of Congress may soon regret that they have adopted not only the rhetoric but the actual tactics from that playbook in their attempt to reject the 2020 election results. I share the concerns of many voters across the country about irregularities in the presidential election. I also share their disappointment with President Trump’s loss. However, the Founders trusted the states to decide elections, not members of Congress. The Republican members who plan to reject certain electors read into the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act a provision that simply does not exist. The 12th Amendment is simple and clear: It calls on Congress to perform the ceremonial role of counting electors. There is no allowance for rejecting electors — no matter how much we may disagree with the result or wish the election process had been better. The electoral college has come under attack in recent years. The left characterizes the system as an antiquated, undemocratic method of selecting the president. In reality, our nation’s Founders designed this system as a compromise that takes into account a variety of competing concerns. The electoral college balanced a desire to allow individuals across the nation to vote for president while also ensuring that small states’ voters would not be ignored.

Full Article: Opinion | Ken Buck: My Republican colleagues’ ploy threatens the future of the electoral college – The Washington Post

Arizona Supreme Court upholds election challenge dismissal | Bob Christie and Jacques Billeaud/Associated Press

The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a lower court decision dismissing the last in a series of challenges that sought to decerify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the state. The high court ruling is the second time the majority-Republican court has turned aside an appeal of a court loss by backers of President Donald Trump seeking to overturn the results of the election. In all, eight lawsuits challenging Biden’s Arizona win have failed. It comes the day before a divided Congress is set to certify Biden’s victory. Tuesday’s ruling from a four-judge panel of the high court agreed with a trial court judge in Pinal County that plaintiff Staci Burk lacked the right to contest the election. That’s because she wasn’t a registered voter at the time she filed her lawsuit, as required in state election contests. Both courts also agreed that she made her legal challenge too late, after the five-day period for filing such an action had passed. Burk said in her lawsuit that she was a qualified Arizona voter, but officials said they discovered she wasn’t registered to vote. She later said she mistakenly thought “qualified electors” were people who were merely eligible to vote, and that her voter registration was canceled because election workers were unable to verify her address. The Supreme Court said the fact that she wasn’t a registered voter was fatal to her ability to file an election challenge and that Burk admitted she knew she wasn’t registered. “There is nothing before the Court to indicate that Appellant timely contacted the appropriate authorities to correct any problems with her voter

Full Article: Arizona Supreme Court upholds election challenge dismissal

District of Columbia: Trump supporters protesting the election begin demonstrating in D.C. | Marissa J. Lang, Emily Davies, Peter Hermann, Jessica Contrera and Clarence Williams/The Washington Post

One day before Congress votes to certify that Joe Biden won the presidential election, Trump supporters who refuse to accept the reality of his defeat demonstrated in Washington again. The city is bracing for potentially violent protests, egged on by President Trump himself. All Tuesday afternoon, people bundled against the cold but free of masks arrived in downtown Washington for what they see as a last stand for Trump, who has continued to falsely assert that the election was stolen from him. Though many Republican lawmakers, all 10 living former defense secretaries and election officials across the country have said Trump should stop attempting to overturn the results of the election, his refusal to do so has only energized his followers. One Wednesday demonstration has a National Park Service permit for up to 30,000 people. Trump said on Twitter that he will speak at 11 a.m. Wednesday and praised those who were echoing his inaccurate version of events in the streets. “They won’t stand for a landslide election victory to be stolen,” he tweeted Tuesday evening.

Full Article: D.C. election protest: Trump supporters begin demonstrating ahead of congressional vote certification – The Washington Post

Georgia: The biggest threat to the runoff election may be Trump | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

As election officials, voting vendors and social media companies prepare for today’s runoff election in Georgia, the biggest concern percolating isn’t foreign interference – it’s President Trump. This last race of a turbulent cycle – which will decide which party takes the Senate majority – is their final test to ensure voters can cast ballots securely and have confidence in the election results. That task, even after the 2020 presidential election was deemed by government and election officials to be the most secure in history, is complicated as Trump and his allies continue to peddle debunked fraud claims and pressure Georgia officials to recalculate the presidential vote in his favor. Georgia election officials say Trump’s voter fraud claims have shaken voter confidence. Their task is now to reassure voters. “Everybody’s vote is going to count. Everybody’s vote did count,” Georgia’s voting system manager Gabriel Sterling said. More than 3 million voters have already cast their ballots, setting a record turnout for a runoff in the state. Trump’s claims, which persist after Georgia certified Joe Biden’s win last month after three counts of ballots, are “all easily, provably false,” Sterling said at the news conference. “Yet the president persists and by doing so undermines Georgians’ faith in the electoral system, especially Republican Georgians.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: The biggest threat to the Georgia runoff may be Trump – The Washington Post

A Georgia election official debunked Trump’s claims of voter fraud, point by point | Maggie Astor/The New York Times

In a searing news conference on Monday, Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, systematically debunked President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. Again. “The reason I’m having to stand here today is because there are people in positions of authority and respect who have said their votes didn’t count, and it’s not true,” said Mr. Sterling, a Republican who last month condemned the president’s failure to denounce threats against election officials, and who was tasked on Monday with responding to the news of a phone call in which Mr. Trump pressured Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to change the outcome of the presidential race. “It’s anti-disinformation Monday,” Mr. Sterling said. “It’s whack-a-mole again, it’s Groundhog Day again, and I’m going to talk about things that I’ve talked about repeatedly for two months. I’m going to do it again one last time. I hope.”

Full Article: How Gabriel Sterling Debunked Trump’s Georgia Fraud Claims, Point by Point – The New York Times

Georgia Officials see few security issues as voters go to the polls | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Officials at the federal and state levels said that as of Tuesday afternoon, they were seeing few security concerns related to the hotly contested Georgia Senate runoff elections, as voters continued to make their ways to the polls. Concerns around both physical and cyber election security had ramped up in the weeks prior to the election, which will decide the balance of power in the U.S. Senate and has come under intense nationwide scrutiny. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that polling stations were experiencing few delays and that there was a wait time averaging around one minute at most jurisdictions. “After wait times averaging just 2 minutes on November 3rd, Georgia’s election administration is hitting a new milestone for effectiveness and efficiency,” Raffensperger said. “I have always said that after every election, half the people will be happy and half will be disappointed, but everyone should be confident in the reliability of the results.” Raffensperger acknowledged that there were technical issues at some polling sites in Columbia County, Ga. earlier on Tuesday, with paper ballot scanners and poll worker cards programmed incorrectly. His office emphasized that voting was not delayed during this time, and that emergency ballots were provided for voters. Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager for Georgia, confirmed this, tweeting Tuesday that the issues in Columbia County involved “a programming error on security keys for some locations scanners & pollworker cards. “Voting continues on backup emergency ballots. Newly programmed keys&cards are being taken to locations via law enforcement,” he added.

Full Article: Officials see few security issues as voters go to the polls in Georgia | TheHill

Georgia Officials Rebutted Trump’s Claim That Dominion Voting Machines Had Failed | Glenn Thrush/The New York Times

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shot down President Trump’s suggestion Tuesday that a voting machine snafu in a conservative county near Augusta had compromised Republican votes in the Senate runoff elections. “Reports are coming out of the 12th Congressional District of Georgia that Dominion Machines are not working in certain Republican Strongholds for over an hour,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, citing a report of glitches first reported by Representative Rick Allen, a Republican who represents the polling places in question. “Ballots are being left in lock boxes, hopefully they count them,” added Mr. Trump. Mr. Raffensperger shot back in his midday status report, saying that “a small number” of keys used to start voting machines had not been programmed properly and “a few” cards used by poll workers to activate touch-screen machines also had programming issues. All of the issues “were resolved by 10 a.m.,” he wrote. “At no point did voting stop as voters continued casting ballots on emergency ballots, in accordance with the procedures set out by Georgia law.” On Saturday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Raffensperger and said, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” according to a recording of the call made by the secretary’s staff.

Full Article: Georgia Officials Rebutted Trump’s Claim That Dominion Voting Machines Had Failed – The New York Times

Michigan: Sidney Powell Should Lose State Law License, Detroit Argues | Joel Rosenblatt/Bloomberg

Detroit officials want former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell to lose her license to practice law in Michigan as punishment for pursuing far-fetched litigation to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Powell is the highest-profile leader of a group of lawyers behind the “Kraken,” her reference to the mythical sea monster, that she promised would be unleashed in the courts and prove that Biden beat incumbent Donald Trump only because Democrats engaged in a massive fraud. Powell’s suit in Michigan was knowingly based on lies and is so frivolous that the group behind it requires the harshest penalty, Detroit said Tuesday in a court filing. “This lawsuit, and the lawsuits filed in the other states, are not just damaging to our democratic experiment, they are also deeply corrosive to the judicial process itself,” lawyers for the city said in a request to U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker to refer Powell for state bar disciplinary proceedings in Michigan and her home state of Texas. Parker last month rejected an attempt by Powell and her fellow attorneys to decertify Michigan’s election results. Powell and the group let a three-week period to withdraw their suit lapse. Detroit argues that’s because it’s taken on a new life supporting arguments for Congress to reject Michigan’s electors on Jan. 6. The Detroit lawyers say Trump repeated the false claims in the Michigan lawsuit in his Saturday phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” just enough votes to overturn Biden’s win.

Full Article: Sidney Powell Should Lose Michigan Law License, Detroit Argues – Bloomberg

Ohio: Audits made near-perfect tally of presidential results | Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

A post-election audit has found that Ohio’s 2020 votes were tallied to near perfection, including those cast in the presidential contest, the state’s elections chief said Tuesday. The announcement by Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose came a day ahead of a brewing showdown in Congress over the outcome of the race between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. Trump has refused to concede and continues, with the help of allies, to pursue challenges to Biden’s victory. The effort hasn’t targeted Ohio, which Trump won by more than 8 percentage points. LaRose has responded to months of unfounded assertions by the president, including that results were rigged, fraudulent or stolen, by touting Ohio’s bipartisan, decentralized election system and advocating transparency. That included making post-election audit results available online for the first time. In counties that used percentage-based assessments, presidential results were 99.98% accurate, LaRose said. “The incredible accuracy of the results as reflected in the post-election audits should make every Ohioan proud not only of their bipartisan election officials, but of the system we have in place,” he said in a statement. “Ohio ran a fair and accurate election.”

Full Article: Audits: Ohio made near-perfect tally of presidential results

Pennsylvania: Republican complaints about election are groundless, state officials and legal scholars argue | Marc Levy/Associated Press

The complaints about Pennsylvania’s election — brought by eight of the state’s Republican members of Congress who say they will oppose electoral votes cast for President-elect Joe Biden — are either untrue or dismissed by the courts, state officials and constitutional law scholars say. Those eight will join dozens of other Republicans around the country whom President Donald Trump has enlisted to challenge the Electoral College vote when Congress convenes in a joint session Wednesday to confirm Biden’s 306-232 win. In statements released last week, they complained about election-related policies of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration and decisions by the state Supreme Court, generally concerning the collection and counting of mail-in ballots. “Until these unlawful practices are acknowledged and corrected, we cannot agree to support electors chosen based upon an inaccurate total vote count,” they wrote. Their complaints, however, are based on outright falsehoods, state officials say, and ignore what courts have repeatedly said, constitutional law scholars say.

Full Article: Republican complaints about Pa. election are groundless, state officials and legal scholars argue – The Morning Call

Utah lawmaker hopes to build voter trust with ballot-tracking system | Hannah Petersen/Deseret News

Amid national discussion about alleged voting irregularities in the presidential race, a Utah lawmaker wants to assure confidence in the election process by creating a system to track voters’ ballots. Rep. Dan Johnson, R-Logan, said the mistrust of mail-in voting being vocalized in many parts of the country led him to sponsor HB70 for the upcoming legislative session to require a ballot tracking system. The system would be optional for registered voters to sign up for, but would provide electronic notifications via email or text that their ballot was received and counted. “I think that really matters to people,” Johnson said, “My concern is that if you guys don’t have trust in voting in a democracy, that can be pretty problematic.” Utah voters can already track their ballots by visiting votesearch.utah.gov once they’ve mailed it in. Johnson wants to give all registered voters the choice to streamline the process of verifying mail-in voting with auto-alerts when their ballots arrive at their county’s ballot center. “It’s just one more way to have that notification and have it quicker and for people to have confidence in the fact that my ballot got to the place where it was supposed to get and those who are in charge, at that point, have actually run the ballot and it’s been properly counted,” Johnson said. Justin Lee, the state’s director of elections, said developing the system could be done easily by obtaining the software capabilities from third-party vendors.

Full Article: Utah lawmaker hopes to build voter trust with ballot-tracking system – Deseret News

Editorial: Ron Johnson’s dangerous shilling for Donald Trump makes him unfit to represent Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The arrogance of Ron Johnson is breathtaking. Johnson and 12 other Republican senators say they will challenge the tabulation of Electoral College votes in Congress on Wednesday in a dangerous political stunt that will accomplish nothing but may burnish their image with those who would choose outgoing President Donald Trump over democracy. Johnson and his shameful friends are planning to support Trump as he directly opposes the will of the people. Their challenge will lead to a long debate in Congress but nothing more, given Democratic control of the House of Representatives. In the end, the results of the presidential election will not change: Joe Biden will still have beaten Trump by 7 million votes and won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. But Johnson’s stunt will do harm to our democracy. What precedent is being set here? What happens the next time a party — either party — loses the presidency narrowly while controlling both houses of Congress? Will those politicians do what Johnson and his hyperpartisan mob are doing? Will they make up lies about the election, cry voter fraud, complain about voting machines, election officials and any other ghost they can conjure? The playbook for turmoil is simple: Create suspicion. Fuel the fears of the side that lost. Don’t bother with facts or truth. Keep repeating and spreading lies until people forget their source and start to believe them or become so confused they can no longer determine the truth.

Full Article: Ron Johnson’s dangerous shilling for Trump makes him unfit for Senate

MAGA marchers plot final D.C. stand on Jan. 6 | Tina Nguyen/Politico

Since Election Day, President Donald Trump’s followers have marched on state capitol buildings and the Supreme Court, protesting the election results. They have demonstrated in front of vote-counting centers, filed lawsuits and floated illogical conspiracy theories. Now, those efforts will come to a head on Wednesday, when the most zealous members of MAGA nation — activists, fans and militia groups — plan to rally one more time in Washington in a dying attempt to keep President Donald Trump in the White House. Timed to the day when Congress will formally certify President-elect Joe Biden’s win, the MAGA crowd is trying to pressure Vice President Mike Pence and Republican lawmakers to refuse to seat Biden over fabricated voter-fraud claims. It’s a doomed plan, given the makeup of Congress, the absent evidence behind the rigged election allegations and the fact that every important state has already certified Biden’s win. Yet that hasn’t stopped a swell of Trump supporters from making plans — and the president from teasing his own appearance. According to disinformation and extremist researchers, the Jan. 6 gathering will look similar to November’s Million MAGA March — a mashup of garden-variety Trump supporters and more extreme members of the far right, with no apparent central organizing apparatus. Stop the Steal, a group affiliated with pro-Trump super PACs and allies of Trump adviser Roger Stone, has filed for permits and plans to protest outside the Capitol, but other groups have also claimed to be the true official planners. There’s one key difference with this march, however. After weeks of failed lawsuits, flailing investigations and Republicans unhitching themselves from Trump’s quest to keep the presidency, the Wednesday rally might be the last one while there’s still a plan — even if it’s an ill-fated one — to subvert the election.

Full Article: MAGA marchers plot final D.C. stand on Jan. 6 – POLITICO

Editorial: We Can’t Let Our Elections Be This Vulnerable Again | Richard L. Hasen/The Atlantic

The 2020 election and its aftermath have laid bare an unhappy truth: Many of the familiar procedures for translating the people’s will into the choice of a president depend on norms of behavior, not laws. Just this past weekend—two months after Election Day—remarkable efforts to mess with election results became apparent, including the revelation of a recording of, on Saturday, President Donald Trump potentially criminally pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” more than 11,000 votes to flip Georgia’s election results from Joe Biden to the president. And well over 100 Republican representatives and about a dozen Republican senators appear poised to object to the counting of Electoral College votes on Wednesday for states that Biden won, despite a complete lack of evidence that the results were marred by fraud or irregularities. These efforts are very serious—and very dangerous.If not for Biden’s significant margin of victory over Trump and for the courageous, politically risky actions of many Republican and Democratic election administrators and elected officials, this Republican attack on American democracy might well have been successful, securing an illegitimate second term for Trump. To remove the potential for this sort of gamesmanship in certifying and counting each state’s votes for president, the country needs to adopt a number of measures in the next few years to eliminate the power of individuals to interfere with election results. This can be done without opening up larger constitutional issues, such as whether to keep or do away with the Electoral College. Americans shouldn’t have to know the inner workings of the canvassing board of Wayne County, Michigan—or depend on representatives and senators to accurately count votes as states have reported them to Congress—to figure out who will be president. The backdrop for these urgent reforms is Trump’s extraordinary effort to delegitimize the election results. Amid the pandemic, the president attacked voting by mail, the safest means of voting to avoid spreading infection. Despite his claims that this shift would open floodgates of fraud, 2020 was a strikingly clean election.

Full Article: We Can’t Let Our Elections Be This Vulnerable Again – The Atlantic

National: Republican plan to stall certification of Biden’s win could hurt future election security, experts say | Tonya Riley/The Washington Post

Nearly a dozen Republican senators are following Sen. Ted Cruz’s lead and threatening to not certify Joe Biden’s win until Congress launches a 10-day audit of the 2020 election based on President Trump’s baseless allegations of voting fraud. Election and legal experts say the last-ditch effort to stall Joe Biden’s win is unlikely to succeed. Even if it did, it would almost certainly fail to change the results of the 2020 election. But the effort could have lasting implications for election integrity in future votes. “It could certainly throw another wrench in our democracy and undermine voter confidence in our elections,” David Levine, elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, told me. Elevating false allegations – especially after the courts have roundly dismissed the election challenges – plays right into the hands of foreign adversaries while undermining trust in local and state election officials, who stand by election results, experts say. The intelligence community and former attorney general William P. Barr said there was no evidence of widespread election fraud or foreign interference that altered the results of the 2020 election. Election officials called it “the most secure in American history.” “This is not going to stop Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris from taking the oath. The legal and factual arguments are flimsy and laughable,” said Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “But it reinforces the idea for millions of people that there was something wrong with the election.”

Full Article: The Cybersecurity 202: Republican plan to stall certification of Biden’s win could hurt future election security, experts say – The Washington Post

National: Alexander Keyssar, leading historian of U.S. democracy, issues an urgent warning | Greg Sargent/The Washington Post

President Trump’s extraordinary effort to browbeat the Georgia secretary of state into rigging the election for him reveals more than just a deranged, desperate man potentially willing to commit crimes to overturn his loss. It also crystallizes the true nature of what will unfold on Wednesday, when dozens of congressional Republicans will join Trump’s effort by objecting to Joe Biden’s electors. This quest to overturn millions of votes in numerous states will fail when the Democratic House scuttles those objections. You’d think many of them would now refrain from challenging Biden’s electors. You’d think the appalling contempt for democracy driving Trump’s effort is now so glaringly clear that they would want no association with it, or would see refraining as a way to demonstrate that this latest lawless display is intolerable. But that’s extremely unlikely. Which raises a question: In a future presidential election, if Republicans control both chambers of Congress and similar objections are brought against a victorious Democrat’s electors, mightn’t they succeed in invalidating them? “It’s become a lot easier to envision that in the last month,” Alexander Keyssar, the leading historian of U.S. democracy, told me. “I find this to be very worrisome — very disturbing.”

Full Article: Opinion | Alexander Keyssar, leading historian of U.S. democracy, issues an urgent warning – The Washington Post

National: All Pence Can Do Is Count | Alan Charles Raul and Richard Bernstein/Wall Street Journal

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert has argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is unconstitutional. Therefore, he claims, Vice President Mike Pence is empowered by the 12th Amendment to reject 73 Biden-Harris electoral votes from five states when Congress meets to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6. A dozen Republican senators and many more House members also argue that Congress has this power. They are all wrong. Neither the vice president nor Congress has the power to reject electoral votes. This is because the 12th Amendment vests no power in the vice president or Congress to judge who won a state’s electoral votes when the authorized branches of the state’s government agree, as they do here, on which electors won. The 12th Amendment left intact the Constitution’s Electors Clause. As the Supreme Court’s three originalist justices wrote in Bush v. Gore (2000), under the Electors Clause, each state’s legislature by statute makes the exclusive “apportionment of responsibility” to state officials to “oversee election disputes” that decide which presidential ticket won the most votes in that state. Election officials and courts from each of the five states in question did exactly that. And by Dec. 14, the states certified that the electors who won were those who voted for Biden-Harris. All the 12th Amendment says is that in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, “the [electoral] votes shall then be counted.” The word “counted” provides no basis for anyone to override anything. When a person counts the number of games his favorite team has won, that person has no power to alchemize losses into wins.

Full Article: All Pence Can Do Is Count – WSJ

National: Dominion Voting Systems CEO plans to sue Sidney Powell imminently | Joseph Choi/The Hill

Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos told Axios on Monday that his company plans on suing former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell imminently for defamation over her claims about its voting machines. “Our focus right now is on Sidney Powell, and there’s very good reason for that. She is by far in our opinion the most egregious and prolific purveyor of the falsities against Dominion. Her statements have caused real damage. They’re demonstrably false,” Poulos said. Powell, formerly part of President Trump‘s team seeking to overturn the 2020 election, has baselessly claimed that Dominion’s algorithm flipped votes and that the company paid Georgia GOP officials to stay quiet on the alleged scheme. “We were originally quiet and we sat back as a company,” he added. “Because our hope was that all of these claims would be filed in a process in court where procedure and evidence is important. And it’s become clear to us that there is absolutely no interest to reveal this evidence because we know it doesn’t exist. And there’s no effort to actually put it in front of the court proceedings so that these allegations and all of the evidence can follow a proper process and be litigated right to the end.” When asked by Axios’s Dan Primack when the lawsuit would be filed, Poulos said, “It’s imminent.” A Dominion spokesperson speaking to The Hill confirmed that a lawsuit would be filed, possibly as soon as this week.

Full Article: Dominion Voting Systems CEO plans to sue Sidney Powell imminently | TheHill