The latest drip, drip, drip of news surrounding the effort to overturn the 2020 election underscores how much we still don’t know about the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021. But one thing that’s clear is that the procedural steps used to select the next president are ripe for abuse. Congress has finally begun to turn its attention to this issue, with a bipartisan group of lawmakers focused thus far on fixing the Electoral Count Act. The 1887 law regulates the process through which Congress counts the electoral votes after each presidential election; it also has a host of ambiguities, many of which were seized on by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to try to keep him in office despite his defeat. Congress is right to address vulnerabilities in our election process. But reformers can’t simply fight the last war if they truly want to protect the presidency. When counting the results of the 2024 presidential election, Trump’s supporters won’t control the vice presidency like they did in 2020. Hence, if they want to try and seize the White House again, they will have to use new strategies that use those political institutions they do control. At present, a House majority is perhaps the one thing Trump’s supporters seem most likely to run during the 2024 presidential election. But that alone might be enough to steal the presidency, unless and until Congress says otherwise.
National: Trump-Aligned Sheriffs Target Election Officials | Jessica Pishko/Bolts
Christopher Schmaling, the sheriff of Racine County, Wisconsin, told the reporters gathered in his office on October 28, 2021 that he’d called a press conference “so that our citizens can better understand how the election law was broken.” Standing at a podium with large screens behind him blaring “ELECTION INTEGRITY”, Schmaling warned that the allegations might be difficult to follow at first. “This isn’t your typical criminal investigation, it’s complex—to be quite frank, it’s a bit challenging to understand at first,” he told the room full of reporters. But Schmaling promised that by the end of his office’s presentation, the public would “see firsthand that the election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered by the members of the W.E.C., the Wisconsin Elections Commission.” Schmaling and Michael Luell, a sergeant in the sheriff’s office who had investigated a complaint about election malfeasance, spent more than an hour running reporters through a PowerPoint presentation, outlining what they claimed was devastating proof that state election commissioners had committed a crime. At first, the press event, which the sheriff’s office streamed live on its Facebook page, sounded more like a civics lesson than a criminal case, as Schmaling explained the makeup of the state’s election commission—six commissioners serving staggered five year terms, appointed by either legislative leaders or the governor.
Full Article: Trump-Aligned Sheriffs Target Election Officials | Bolts