Where is the #PenceCard? Et Tu Brute?
You may be wondering if Mike Pence is stabbing Trump in the back. The White House released a memo outlining what is referred to as the Pence card. This announcement by Vice President Pence needed to be revealed on the 23rd of December.
Many people were waiting for a Pence card to be unleashed on December 23. There was actually a countdown going on all over the internet. What came out was equally promising.
By the book
By law Vice President Mike Pence is required to reject electors from the states that did not legally certify their elections.
All the swing states that sent a dueling set of electors have ongoing legal challenges. At this time, the vote counts have not been settled. According to the constitution, the states with outstanding legal challenges did not certify their electors properly because their elections remain contested. It is for this reason that the voter integrity alliances in several states are suing Vice President Pence for accepting illegal noncertified electors by their state legislature per the constitution and legal precedent. Because of this ongoing legal challenge, Mike Pence will not be able to accept the set of electors from the swing states that were not chosen by their state legislatures. This legal precedent was established by the 2000 legal case of Bush v Gore and in early America.
“the state legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by state legislatures in several States for many years after the framing of our Constitution. … The State, of course, after granting the franchise in the special context of Article II, can take back the power to appoint electors.”
Bush v gore
The Biden electoral slates will be tied up in litigation
On January 6 the house and the senate may simply pick the electors that voted in favor of Donald Trump and Pence. The other option is a contested election. This option will have the House of Representaives vote for the President and have the United States Senate vote for the Vice President. Donald Trump would win in the house because each state gets a single vote according to the constitution. When voting for the President the house does not use its typical voting procedure. Instead of each representative getting a vote, each state gets a single vote. In the Senate, Mike Pence should be re-elected with a Republican majority. In either scenario, Trump would win reelection.
This latest document is a Kraken in its own right. It was filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Peachy
It appears as though the Pence card was not meant to be played quite the way everyone was expecting.
Trump still has multiple pathways to a second term. The pathway that everyone should be watching closely is the dueling elector’s pathway. In related news, the Georgia hearings were not as fruitful as the Trump team had hoped. The Georgia legislature discussed ways to prevent election irregularities for future elections but did not make a meaningful decision in the 2020 election problems. Trump tweeted “They are slow-walking the signature verification in Georgia. They don’t want results to get out prior to January 6th. They know what they are trying so hard to hide.”