Johnson would contest 2024 election results under the same 'circumstances'

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Maga Mike will not accept the results of the 2024 election unless TFG wins. We need to take control of the House before the next electoral college vote count.

Link to tweet

https://www.rawstory.com/johnson-would-contest-2024-election-results-under-the-same-circumstances-2668247403/

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he has a "duty" and "responsibility" to contest the results of the presidential election if there is a question about the process complying with the U.S. Constitution and vowed to do so again this year as he did in 2020, if the same "circumstances were presented." The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the 2020 case with Johnson's claims, and his argument was dismissed by a constitutional expert as being on "the far-right fringes of American legal thought."

Johnson joined an increasing number of top GOP lawmakers this past week who were asked if they will accept the results of the 2024 election, especially if the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, loses. Up until the 2020 election amid Donald Trump's interference, the United States had enjoyed the regular, peaceful transfer of power for more than 200 years.

Before being elevated to Speaker, Johnson was a little known Louisiana Republican back-bencher who happened to be the "congressional architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, advocating an interpretation of the Constitution so outlandish that not even the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority could swallow it," according to Michael Waldman, a constitutional attorney and president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.....

"Johnson was the legal mastermind behind the doomed push to decertify the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin," Waldman wrote in October of 2023 after Johnson became Speaker of the House. "He pressured colleagues to sign on to his effort, warning them ominously that Trump would be 'anxiously awaiting the final list to review.'"

In a lengthy interview with Politico published Friday, Johnson was asked if he had any "regrets" about his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won.

"No, I don’t," Johnson told Politico. "My point in the amicus brief — people often ask me about this and they never read the brief — was a very simple and very profoundly important legal question. And that is, was the plain language of the Constitution violated in the days that led up to the 2020 election? And it very clearly was, because the language of the Constitution says plainly the state legislatures are the bodies in each of the states that determine the process by which electors are chosen. In a presidential election year, it’s a critically important thing."......

"And so you asked me if I regret that? I don’t. I would do the exact same thing today if the circumstances were presented, because I feel like I have a duty. I’m an officer of the Congress and I have a responsibility. We take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and if it’s plainly on its face not being followed, I have an obligation as an officer of this body to present that to the judicial branch."

[BlueKota]

1. They're laying the grounwork to try and steal it already

[2naSalit]

2. No question he would.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Potential GOP running mates hedge on accepting election results

The problem is not just that Donald Trump is refusing to commit to honoring the election results. It's that his would-be running mates are hedging, too.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/potential-gop-running-mates-hedge-accepting-election-results-rcna151997

Last week, for example, Sen. Tim Scott appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where host Kristen Welker repeatedly pressed the South Carolinian to simply say, “yes or no,” whether he was prepared to accept the results of the 2024 presidential election. Scott refused.

Seven days later, it was Sen. J.D. Vance’s turn. NBC News reported:

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, a potential vice presidential contender, said Sunday that he would “totally plan” to accept the presidential election results — if the election is “free and fair.” ... “I totally plan to accept the results of 2024,” Vance told CNN anchor Dana Bash, adding that he believes Trump will be victorious.

This is, to be sure, a rather clumsy shell game.

Republicans “plan” to accept 2024 results, so long as the elections are “free and fair.”

Republicans will decide for themselves whether the elections were “free and fair,” based on amorphous and undefined standards they will not share.

If Democrats win elections, the results necessarily trigger questions about the “free and fair” nature of the elections — because Republicans say so — at which point the GOP’s “plan” to accept the results is thrown out the window.

Obviously, Vance’s position is difficult to take seriously. But what makes this partisan dynamic far more alarming is the fact he and Tim Scott aren’t the only ones hedging and adding caveats to their answers about this foundational question......

But to see the developments this way is to overlook the broader dangers. When a major political party tells its most ambitious members that they’re expected to be skeptical of election results, it reflects a dangerous degree of radicalism.

Link to tweet

Rachel’s A block from last week rings true. “The way you lose your democracy is by losing the expectation that we are participating in an election because all sides in that election plan to accept the result — to go home if they lose and to go into office if they win,” she said. “Once we no longer expect that, we are no longer in a democratic system of government in many important respects.

“Once one of the two major governing parties no longer believes elections are binding, then in many important ways, the democracy ship has sailed, because they are no longer competing on democratic grounds. Once one of the two major parties is no longer pledging that they will abide by the election results whether they win or lose, the democratic system of government is not threatened with harm, it is wounded already.”