Thread by @pleasesaveour

I am incredibly confused about the Electoral Count Act, so I'm going to try to figure it out.

3 U.S. Code § 15 - Counting electoral votes in Congress
law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/…

Read the Nov. 18 Memo on Alternate Trump Electors

This memo is among the earliest known efforts to put on paper proposals for preparing alternate slates of Trump electors in Biden-won states

Remember this name: Kenneth Chesebro
nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Read the Dec. 9 Memo on Alternate Trump Electors

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Referenced in the memo

3 USC 6-11
Credentials of electors; transmission to Archivist of the United States and to Congress; public inspection

law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/6

The plausibility of their interpretations underscore the urgent need to reform the Electoral Count Act and its ambiguities.

Chesebro contended that the Trump electors should meet and vote, not to engage in criminal fraud as some have interpreted it, but rather to simply preserve

their claim for Congress to consider at the joint session on January 6. In support of this, he cited a little‐​known incident from the 1960 presidential election

Seems, this was attempted during Bush/Gore as well

Electors complicated 1960 vote
baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-20…

That year, John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard Nixon, who was at that time the incumbent vice president. It was an election rife with irregularities and much more plausible claims of fraud than anything alleged in 2020

The discrepancies weren’t wide enough to decide the election. In the long run, the close election changed politics by forcing parties to focus on the Electoral College, while fueling partisanship at the same time.

constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama…

When Congress meets to count the electoral votes, there are actually two certificates from each state that they must consider. The first, the certificate of the electors, is from the state gov and ID's who has been appointed as the state’s members of the Electoral College. The

2nd, the certificate of the actual votes, is drawn up and certified by the electors themselves under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_A…

Passed by Congress December 9, 1803. Ratified June 15, 1804. The 12th Amendment changed a portion of Article II, Section 1. A portion of the 12th Amendment was changed by the 20th Amendment
constitutioncenter.org/interactive-co…

20th Amendment - Ratified in 1935

Presidential Term and Succession, Assembly of Congress
constitution.findlaw.com/amendment20.ht…

The certificate of votes must, per the Constitution, be given on January 6th throughout the US which Congress has set by law.

Here’s where Kenneth Chesebro found an overlooked loophole in the ECA that seems to have been bolstered by the Nixon Hawaii case. There’s no explicit

provision for a deadline for when the states must certify who their electors are, so he reasoned that this could be as late as when Congress convened on January 6, even long after the electors were supposed to cast their votes.

Nowhere does current law actually specify an absolute deadline after which states may not certify the identity of their electors, even though common sense would indicate that the latest possible day is when the electors are supposed to perform their duties in December.

The new proposal would clarify that the vice president's role overseeing the formal counting of the Electoral College vote is ceremonial.

This makes total sense bc as it stands now, the VP can call the election for himself.

thehill.com/homenews/senat…

It also increases the number of lawmakers in the House and Senate that need to support an objection before both chambers must vote on it. Currently, it just takes one member from the House and Senate.

The legislation would increase it to one-third of both chambers.

It also increases the threshold for upholding the objection from a simple majority in both chambers to three-fifths in both chambers.

The proposal would also narrow the reasons Congress can object to a state's electoral votes during the formal counting.

And it would try to

strengthen against the possibility of "fake electors," something that has flared up in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and set a deadline of Dec. 20 for states to resolve post-election disputes and make a final determination of the appointment of electors.

This we need to keep an eye on, as this closes the loopholes in the 12th Amendment, so get ready to make phone calls!

#ElectoralCollegeAct
#12thAmendment

@threadreaderapp unroll please