Please allow me to discuss Ted Cruz and company's sham "electoral commission" plan, to identify both what it's really about, and why it's blatantly illegal. I'll also reach back to the Electoral Commission of 1876, which is being used as a basis for this scam.
In 1876, there was a contested election between Samuel J. Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes. Four states had two different slates of electors submitted to Congress. KEY TO THIS was that each slate was certified by a State government official. Today, the ONLY elector slates that have been certified in the contested States were for Biden. The Republican "electors" met on their own and appointed themselves. There is no valid argument that they have been certified.
At the time, just like now, Democrats controlled the House and Republicans controlled the Senate. ANOTHER KEY - the House and the Senate agreed to create a commission. Today, there isn't even a hint that the Democratically-controlled House would agree to such a commission.
Why is that distinction so crucial? Please allow me to explain. Right now, we're operating under a law that came in response to the 1876 election crisis, the Electoral Count Act of 1877. Whether you like it or not, that is the prevailing law. The only way to bypass it is by a new law. Republicans can't just object to the vote, appoint a commission, and create a process that is contrary to controlling law. Why not? BECAUSE IT'S CONTRARY TO CONTROLLING LAW.
But hey, you might ask, they did it back then and it worked out, so why don't we do it again?
Do you know what happened in 1877? Let me tell you.
The 1876 election led to the 1877 commission, and that led to the compromise of 1877. What was that? It was the absolute unwinding of Reconstruction. The compromise removed the US Army from the South, destroying any chance that the newly-freed Black population of the South would actually be free. The compromise turned the power in the South back to the slavers and the Klan. It was the beginning of Jim Crow, and the end, for almost a century (until the passage of the Civil Rights Act), of even a dream of equality in the South.
Does that sound like a good result to you?
It was so God-awful that Congress decided to fix it. It passed the Electoral Count Act of 1877. Think about that for a minute- the example being used by Cruz & Co. is one that was so bad that Congress created a solution, and now they want to bypass that solution and recreate the problem.
But now let me get to the punchline. I've mentioned it before, but not with this full context. Allow me to shout what matters:
THIS ISN'T ABOUT THE COMMISSION - IT'S ABOUT WHAT COMES NEXT!!
You see, the "commission" is just step 1 in a two-step plan, and this is where it gets incredibly illegal.
Step 1 is a "commission" that will "review" the fraud allegations, and that "review" will be made by the people making the fraud allegations. But that really doesn't matter. You see, what they want to do is get to Step 2.
Step 2 says, "Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission's findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed."
That's what it's all about. And that's why it's illegal.
What's it about? It's about having a commission, letting the people who want to claim fraud yell "fraud," and then, AND THIS IS THE KEY, giving permission to statehouses in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, states with Republican majorities, to throw away the votes of their citizens and appoint Donald Trump electors. That's the game. It's not the commission, it's giving permission to those statehouses to ignore the voters.
And it's illegal.
Why is it illegal? It's illegal because the Electoral Count Act of 1877 sets out the methodology for counting electoral votes, and that relies upon certification of electoral slates by the individual States. That has happened, and Biden wins. So the whole plan is to bypass the Electoral Count Act of 1877 and, contrary to controlling law, give State legislatures the authority to also bypass the law and ignore the will of their voters.
Hey, you might wonder, isn't the Electoral Count Act of 1877 unconstitutional? First, a collection of congress-critters has no authority to declare a statute unconstitutional. Second, that's not even what's happening here. They're not trying to declare the statute unconstitutional, they're just trying to bypass it.
So what do we conclude from all this? We must conclude the Cruz & Co. plan is really a conspiracy to bypass the law and hand the presidential election over to Republican statehouses, contrary to the will of the voters and the law of the land, all based upon an event almost 150 years ago that looks nothing like what's happening now, that ended horribly, and that was so bad that a law was written to prevent it from ever happening again.
Keep all that in mind when you see Cruz and the rest of the smarmy SOBs slickly trying to pass off the idea that they "just want to get to the bottom of the allegations," the allegations that those same people are pumping into the system.
