Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 12:26 pm
Republican pollster Rasmussen Reports quoted Joseph Stalin to support their effort to stage a coup to overturn the election.
Rasmussen Reports tweeted:
At that moment, the Presidency will be in his hands.
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And there is nothing stopping Pence, under the (plenary and unappealable) authority vested in him as President of the Senate, from declining to open and count the certificates from the six disputed states.
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— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) December 27, 2020
There is one problem with this theory that Louie Gohmert and Republicans are pushing with their new coup attempt. Pence’s role is strictly limited by the Constitution. Pence does not have the power to toss out electoral college voters or decide which ones get counted.
According to Forbes, “The Constitution instructs Pence to open all the certificates sent by Electoral College delegates, and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 requires him to also open all “papers purporting to be certificates,†meaning he can’t reject any electors on his own, though he could try to open certificates for both the official electors and the self-appointed ‘alternate electors’ Trump’s campaign assembled in several swing states.”
There is nothing that Mike Pence can do. He is constitutionally nothing more than someone who reads the results out loud.
If a slate of electors is contested both the House and Senate have to vote to throw them out. Even if the Senate voted to toss electors from the five swing states that Biden won, the House would never go along with it.
Republicans are now quoting communist dictator mass murderers as their justification for overturning the election. Anyone who quotes Stalin on an election is an enemy of democracy.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
