A federal judge threw out the lawsuit late Saturday that challenged President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, days before Congress was set to officially confirm the presidential election results.
Pence, as per the most recent decision by Judge Jeremy Kernodle in Texas, has no authority to tamper in any way with the results of states’ electoral votes. The judge dismissed the suit that requested the certified states’ electoral votes for the presidential race be thrown out and instead be determined by one Republican man, Trump’s vice-president and right-hand man Mike Pence.
The vice-president by law is the government official who oversees the certification of state election results. However, Pence’s role is more akin to an Oscar award host who reads aloud the winner and has zero power to change the results of the electoral votes. His role is not one of decision making but instead, that of an actor reciting an official script.
Over the weekend, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case by numerous Republicans who wanted to be “alternative electors” and claimed the constitution allows Vice President Pence the legal power to chose which electors he would certify while overruling others.
As the judges of the Fifth Circuit Court noted, the plaintiffs had no legal standing to sue.
Last week, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas filed a lawsuit to disrupt the legal electoral votes’ process. The all-Republican plaintiffs in that case, arguing to overthrow the legitimate and certified presidential election counts despite Trump’s 60 failed lawsuits that prove otherwise, are Louie Gohmert; Tyler Bowyer; Nancy Cottle; Jake Hoffman; Anthony Kern; James R. Lamon; Sam Moorhead; Robert Montgomery; Loraine Pellegrino; Greg Safsten; Kelli Ward; and Michael Ward.
In their tersely worded decision, the circuit judges stated, “The district court lacks jurisdiction because no plaintiff has the standing demanded by Article III. We need say no more, and we affirm the judgment essentially for the reasons stated by the district court. We express no view on the underlying merits or on what putative party, if any, might have standing.”
Pence was named as the defendant in the lawsuit, with the group of Republicans claiming the process by which Congress certifies states’ electoral college votes is unconstitutional.
Instead, they argued, the vice-president should decide how the votes are cast instead of relying on the states’ certified electoral votes. The Republican group requested Pence should have sole discretion in deciding who the presidential winner would be, in essence, allowing one man to overthrow the states’ electors' official votes.
Baseless claims of electoral fraud have been resoundingly defeated through the loss of Trump’s 60 lawsuits. No evidence of any electoral fraud has been uncovered.
In an odd lawsuit that parallels the surreal 2020 presidential election, Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert and a group of Republican Electors from Arizona have filed a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence. Their argument, in part, is that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional. Plaintiffs in the all-Republican lawsuit include... Read More »
President Donald Trump, backed by 17 US states, sought to intervene in the Texas lawsuit seeking the overturning of the US Presidential election by asking the US Supreme Court to throw out millions of voting results in four key states on Tuesday. The president is asking to intervene in the US... Read More »
The Trump campaign was dealt another blow in the 2020 election as Philadelphia has become the latest state to reject a lawsuit challenging the state's counting of what the campaign alleges are "illegal votes." Republican efforts led by U.S. Representative Mike Kelly allege that approximately 2.5 million mail-in ballots were... Read More »
In a case that challenged a 2019 Pennsylvania statute that permits no-excuse absentee voting, Pennsylvania representative Mike Kelly and seven other Trump supporters sued the Commonwealth on the grounds that the mail-in voting in last month’s election was unconstitutional. They argued that altering the existing election law (which allowed for... Read More »
