Election security

 

The Death Star Strategy: Is Trump Contemplating The Ultimate Constitutional Trick Shot?

Below is my column in The Hill on the possibility of contesting electoral certifications by key states. With the adverse ruling in Pennsylvania, the Trump legal team is still pledging new evidence of massive fraud as certifications are completed. The options for the team seem more and more reduced to the ultimate constitutional trick shot in engineering a fight on the floor of Congress. Here is the column:

The Thursday press conference by President Trump’s legal team left many breathless as Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani alleged a global communist conspiracy to steal the 2020 election. While making passing references to credible election challenges over provisional ballots or “curing” rules, he repeatedly returned to the allegation of a purported massive conspiracy directed by Democrats to change and “inject” votes into state tallies.

It was a strange narrative that seemed to move away from the provable to the unbelievable. The question is, why?

One possibility: to raise sweeping allegations with insufficient time to resolve them in order to force an Electoral College fight. The idea would be to give license to Republican-controlled legislatures to intervene with their own sets of electors or block the submission of any set of electors. Concern over such a strategy was magnified when Trump called key Republican leaders from Michigan’s legislature to the White House on Friday.