Trump's Case To Change the Electoral College Vote Is Much Stronger Than Dems' Was in '16
Remember following the 2016 election when Democrats and their allies in the media were cheering on the idea of “faithless electors.”
Their argument was that Russia had interfered with the American election so Donald Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton could not be trusted.
New York Magazine headlined, “Last-Minute Push to Sway Electoral College Voters Intensifies,” noting that then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi supported the effort by 79 Democrat electors to be briefed by the Obama administration on Russia’s alleged interference.
Politico reported that California Democratic elector Christine Pelosi, the speaker’s daughter, spearheaded the effort.
“The nation’s 538 presidential electors have been thrust into the political foreground like never before in American history. In the aftermath of a uniquely polarizing presidential contest, the once-anonymous electors are squarely in the spotlight, targeted by death threats, harassing phone calls and reams of hate mail. One Texas Republican elector said he’s been bombarded with more than 200,000 emails,” the news outlet explained.
One GOP Arizona elector told The Washington Post, she was receiving 50 letters and 3,000 emails a day ahead of the December 2016 Electoral College vote urging her to be a faithless elector.
The New York Times reported that a “historic number” of electors in fact defected, voting for someone other than their party’s nominee.
As happened multiple times during the Trump administration, Democrats have given themselves no ground to stand on when the president now argues he has real concerns about the integrity of the current election.
If “Russia, Russia, Russia” allegations were a legitimate reason to argue for electors to vote differently (and they weren’t by the way) than the results of the election, how much more when Trump’s campaign has offered hundreds of affidavits and other evidence of fraud in hearings before state legislators in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
The campaign, in fact, is calling for the Republican-controlled legislatures in these states to exercise their constitutional authority to stop the final certification of the presidential election in their respective states.
How can YOU help protect election integrity?
Call your legislators in PA, AZ, MI, GA, WI, and NV.
They are the authority our Constitution designated to protect against corruption in presidential elections.
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) December 4, 2020
“Even without the courts intervening, the state legislatures can take back their authority under Article II and they can actually stop this certification and they can say, ‘No, this election was fraudulent. It was corrupted and we are going to provide that remedy,'” Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Friday.
Ellis discussed a newly surfaced video from a Fulton County, Georgia counting site allegedly showing boxes of ballots being counted after election officials told observers to go home because the counting for the night was done.
“This is what my co-counsel Rudy Giuliani described as ‘the smoking gun,’” Ellis said. “This verified the testimony that we already had from other poll watchers and other people who were there who said that they had to leave and described all these irregular activities and the violations against the law.”
Georgia Public Broadcasting fact-checked the claim, reporting that legal ballot counting is all that occurred in Fulton County; however, the news outlet noted, “No monitors were told to leave, but Republican monitors and members of the media left when some election employees called ‘cutters’ wrapped up for the night.”
Why were they told it was a wrap for the night when it was not? It raises legitimate questions whether everything was above board.
Georgia Public Broadcasting further pointed while having party observers is permitted, it is not required by law.
Why are party observers permitted? To give people confidence that the vote is being counted fairly.
WATCH: Video footage from Georgia shows suitcases filled with ballots pulled from under a table AFTER supervisors told poll workers to leave room and 4 people stayed behind to keep counting votes pic.twitter.com/AcbTI1pxn4
— Team Trump (@TeamTrump) December 3, 2020
The president’s son, Eric, tweeted an image appearing to show the spike in votes for Democrat Joe Biden in Fulton County after the monitors were told to go home.
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) December 4, 2020
Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has called for a verification of absentee ballot signatures, which is particularly important given the low 0.03 percent absentee ballot rejection rate, or 4,500 ballots among the 1.3 million cast.
FINALLY Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is calling for a signature audit.
What took him so long???
This is BASIC election integrity ignored until now… pic.twitter.com/xK6fIJY2aj
— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) December 4, 2020
Only 12,670 votes separate Biden from Trump in the Peach State.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, where Biden’s current lead is an even smaller 10,457 votes, there is also reason to believe Trump could yet prevail if election irregularities are addressed.
On Thursday, Arizona Republican Chairwoman Kelli Ward told KFYI-AM radio talk show host James T. Harris an Arizona judge granted the campaign access to 100 ballots as a random sample to check for “red flag” issues among the 1.9 million ballots that came in absentee, as well as the duplicate ballots filled out by election officials in Maricopa County when the original ballots could not be read by the voting machine.
“We didn’t know if we were going to be successful with these 100 ballots we got to look at because it’s such a small sample,” Ward said.
“What did we find? A 3 percent swing towards president Trump,” she added.
In one instance a duplicate ballot was allegedly switched from Trump to Biden. So when corrected, that is in effect a two-vote swing, Biden loses one and Trump gains.
In another instance, a ballot was allegedly filled out for the president but discarded. “So there is funny business,” Ward said.
In Arizona, it turns out that 3% of the votes cast in the 100 count vote sampling were tainted or worse. This would be, if carried forward, approximately 90,000 votes more than we would need to win the State. Now we were granted a much larger sample to work with. Wow!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2020
The chairwoman believes the irregularities regarding duplicate ballots and other issues in Maricopa County alone (which encompasses Phoenix) could change the outcome of the election.
Ward further noted that whistleblowers at Monday’s election hearing involving Giuliani, Ellis and Arizona legislators spoke about irregularities in Pima County (Tucson) and Coconino County (in northern AZ), which also went for Biden.
On Friday, the Arizona Senate president, the speaker of the House and other legislative leaders called for an independent audit of Maricopa County’s election software and equipment.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Legislative Leaders call for audit of Maricopa County election software and equipment #AZSenate #AZleg #Election @AZHouseGOP pic.twitter.com/wDlr7v0fDT
— AZSenateRepublicans (@AZSenateGOP) December 4, 2020
In Pennsylvania, legislators last week heard testimony from the Trump campaign legal team of irregularities in the count, including observers being denied access in Philadelphia, as well as inconsistent treatment regarding curing absentee ballots, and the acceptance of ballots after the deadline.
On Friday, 76 members of the Pennsylvania legislature wrote a letter to their congressional delegation calling on them to reject the state’s electors being counted in light Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf undermining many of the legal protections designed to ensure the integrity of the vote.
WOW. Letter from over 76 members of the PA legislature asking Congress to reject PA’s electors. The focus is on multiple violations of Article II, Sec. 1, Cl. 2 by the Democrat Governor and Democrat Secretary of State.https://t.co/zjpm0mLRBm
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) December 4, 2020
All these issues are apart from the whistleblower accounts of between 144,000 and 288,000 completed mail-in ballots being trucked in from New York to Pennsylvania and 47 missing USB voting machine cards in Delaware County outside of Philadelphia, placing up to 120,000 votes in question.
Jesse Morgan—a truck driver (subcontractor) with USPS in PENNSYLVANIA…pic.twitter.com/EFxXZnQCUS
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2020
If Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania flip — either through the legislatures or the courts — Trump remains president of the United States.
One thing is clear: While Democrats in 2016 wanted electors to vote against Trump because they did not like the outcome, the president makes a compelling case the Electoral College should change in 2020 because fraud has occurred.
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