[ad_1]
An 11-hour attempt by some Republican members of the Pennsylvania State House to get the Legislature to intervene directly in the state’s certification of the popular vote victory for President-elect Joe Biden here appears to have failed after a caucus meeting party with a virtual majority on Saturday evening.
A group of members, none of whom are senior House leadership, had drafted a resolution that would declare a House finding that the presidential election results are in dispute, and “urging” Governor Tom Wolf and her secretary Tell Kathy Boockvar to cancel their certification of Biden’s victory.
The resolution, on its own, would not have been binding on Wolf, but supporters hoped it would have created a platform and more pressure for further steps, including: a formal challenge to the voters’ base. of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party by members of the State Congress. delegation; or efforts in the General Assembly to nominate its own voters.
But after Saturday’s discussion, it was clear that the House’s effort was going nowhere.
House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster County, and Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Center County, said in a statement released at the break-up of the caucus that they agreed processes and procedures election campaign required a top-down review for consistency and fairness, but they said there was no time to take legislative action on this year’s results and they would not recall the Chamber in session.
Their joint statement read in part:
“We are physically unable to consider new legislation before the end of the session. A single resolution takes three legislative days to consider and a simultaneous resolution takes five legislative days to pass through both houses, which means we don’t have time to deal with new resolutions in our current session, ”which expires Monday according to the state. Constitution.
“It is evident that Pennsylvania’s electoral processes are in urgent need of redress. Our work to prevent the chaos and confusion of the 2020 election from being repeated will continue in the next legislative session.
According to the state’s unofficial final tally, Biden defeated President Donald J. Trump by 81,660 votes: 3,459,923 to 3,378,263. That’s a margin of 50.02% to 48.84%, the rest votes going to the Libertarian Party candidate, Jo Jorgensen.
Wolf certified the result on Tuesday, giving Biden the 20 votes from state electoral colleges.
Following Trump’s lead, some Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania questioned the tally, arguing that the mail-in election part was played by different rules in some of the state’s more democratic counties, which, they say may have inflated Biden’s margin of victory in those areas.
Republicans were also angry at what they saw as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s intrusion into legislative affairs when it upheld a directive from the Wolf administration allowing mailed ballots to arrive at offices. voters on the Friday following polling day are accepted for the count.
Wolf, and the courts, postulated this development because of the widely reported slowdowns in the U.S. Postal Service in the weeks leading up to the vote.
The Trump campaign has so far failed to achieve major victories in state or federal courts over its arguments.
His latest loss came on Saturday, when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed a case claiming that the state’s postal voting provisions passed in 2019 violated provisions of the state’s constitution.
The judges, in a 5-2 decision, ruled that the challenge should have been brought before the state held primary and general elections with the new procedure. The two dissidents, both elected to court as Republicans, felt the case should be heard on the merits, but even they said they would not be willing to overturn this year’s results as the campaign presidential election was fully held according to the new rules.
Meanwhile, a federal court of appeals committee on Friday denied another effort to block certification of the Pennsylvania vote. Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote that there was no evidence to support his claims that the 2020 presidential election was unfair.
“The accusations of injustice are serious. But calling an election unfair doesn’t make it that way, ”Bibas wrote in the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals opinion. “Charges require specific allegations and then evidence. We don’t have either here.
House members set to work on their legislative resolution after a delegation led by State Senator Doug Mastriano, from R-Franklin County, met with Trump’s legal team in Washington this week to review the strategies.
The intermediary representatives who signed the House resolution were Representatives Barb Gleim and Greg Rothman, County of R-Cumberland; Rob Kauffman and Paul Schemel, R-Franklin County; Russ Diamond and Frank Ryan, R-Lebanon County; Dawn Keefer and Mike Jones, R-York County; and David Zimmerman, County of R-Lancaster; be p. Dan Moul, R-Adams County.
“All we want is an election where legal votes count and illegal votes don’t,” Moul told PennLive ahead of Saturday’s members-only meeting. “We have to get to this point, and if we don’t, I have the country going to peel more than it is today.
“There are 73 million people in this country who want answers, and they’re not going to be just, ‘Well, I don’t think we can do it.'”
A federal protest to the voters of Pennsylvania would require a challenge by at least one senator and one House member from the state congressional delegation. Several members of the U.S. delegation from Pennsylvania might be willing to do so, but U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, R-Allentown, has previously said he has not seen evidence of a serious problem with the tally of the State.
Some members of the State House also appeared to operate in the belief that the Pennsylvania legislature – with the passage of dispute resolutions in both houses – could intervene directly in the nomination of Pennsylvania voters, although Moul acknowledged that this would likely trigger a whole new series of court battles. .
This step would follow the playbook used by the Florida legislature in the state’s hotly contested 2000 presidential election between former President George W. Bush and his opponent, former Vice President Al Gore.
In this case, both houses of the legislature were proposing identical resolutions that supporters said would give it the right to appoint its own voters – without the governor’s approval – in the event of an unresolved outcome. Their efforts, which would undoubtedly have sparked their own legal battles, were bypassed when the United States Supreme Court halted any further recount, tipping the election to Bush.
Pennsylvania Republicans control the legislation movement in Harrisburg due to strong GOP majorities in both State House, 109-93; and Senate, 28-21, with an independent. The majority party in each respective chamber decides which measures are voted on and when.
That said, it was far from clear that the resolution would have passed by State House if a session had been called on Monday.
Supporters claimed 26 co-sponsors on Saturday afternoon, but they likely would have needed 102 of the 110 Republican caucus members to secure passage, as it would be hard to see more than a handful of Democrats, if not that, vote for such a measure.
The House leaders, while being sensitive to the concerns of their members, essentially put the issue on ice Saturday by noting that the sands lacked an hourglass for legislative action. In some cases, majorities could and continue to move on fast lanes with House rule suspensions, but even if it were possible here, it would require super-majority votes that Republicans alone could not muster. .
Trump supporters face this time crunch because, according to Pennsylvania’s constitution, each legislative session ends on November 30 of an even year. The next session, meanwhile, doesn’t start after a swearing-in day the following January, which would be well after the Electoral College’s votes tabulation this year.
A slightly stronger resolution was presented to the Senate by Mastriano, but sources in that chamber said on Saturday that GOP majority leaders were inclined to consider returning to session only if the House – which appears to need two days to complete its review of the resolution and would. at least have to hammer out for a committee vote on Sunday – moved first.
[ad_2]
Source link