Originally Posted by Wonder Boy
Explaining the 12th Amendment options that Vice President Pence had on Jan 6th, as quoted from a former assistant Attorney General John Yoo, and by a former Homeland Security Council deputy counsel Robert Delahunty....

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In October, writing for The American Mind, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law Professor (and former Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General [under George W. Bush]) John Yoo, as well as University of St. Thomas School of Law Professor (and former Deputy General Counsel of the United States Homeland Security Council [also under Dubya]) Robert Delahunty, related something of keen interest:

  • Under the 12th Amendment, “the President of the Senate [i.e., the Vice President] shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates [of the electoral votes of the states] and the votes shall then be counted.” Left unclear is who is to “count” the electors’ votes and how their validity is to be determined.

    Over the decades, political figures and legal scholars have offered different answers to these constitutional questions. We suggest that the Vice President’s role is not the merely ministerial one of opening the ballots and then handing them over (to whom?) to be counted. Though the 12th Amendment describes the counting in the passive voice, the language seems to envisage a single, continuous process in which the Vice President both opens and counts the votes.

    The check on error or fraud in the count is that the Vice President’s activities are to be done publicly, “in the presence” of Congress. And if “counting” the electors’ votes is the Vice President’s responsibility, then the inextricably intertwined responsibility for judging the validity of those votes must also be his.


Their article, titled What Happens if No One Wins?, and subtitled, “(t)he Constitution provides for election crises—and its provisions favor Trump,” is essential reading for a time like this, as well as the future, in my humble, non-barrister’s opinion.

Will Pence take advantage of his power under the 12th Amendment? Who is to say he cannot claim that vast fraud and irregularities took place, using Peter Navarro’s 36-page report, The Immaculate Deception, as reason for discarding the official Dem electors? After all, Navarro is hardly some schnook who just fell off the turnip wagon; he simultaneously serves as the Assistant to the President and the Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.

Of course, the Electoral Count Act, which specifies how Congress tallies electoral votes, should at least be brought up here, but the Act itself may be unconstitutional, as Yoo and Delahunty argue: “Congress cannot use legislation to dictate how any individual branch of government is to perform its unique duties: Congress could not prescribe how future Senates should conduct an impeachment trial, for example.”

It would be near-impossible to seriously maintain, then, that Pence is violating the law simply because he is following the plain language of the Constitution itself. Needless to mention, a great deal would do exactly that, which, at the very least, would make for some choice free entertainment.

...argues that Pence absolutely did have the authority to decide the election, or at the very least allow nationally televised debate of the evidence of election fraud. There were multiple paths to an V P or legislative overturn of the fraudulent election. Pence for whatever reason abdicated those options, that would have made him a hero to the over 50% of the country who can plainly see the Biden coup, under the guise of being a free and fair election, was illegitimate. Justice and legality would be not allowing it to stand.

Pence will forever be remembered as the VP who sold us all out, particularly in the face of an incredibly corrupt Biden administration, whose corruption and incompetence the nation might not survive.

I’m not a Pence fan in any way. He spent 4 years enabling this corrupt president. Even here if Pence could have gotten away with throwing out official electoral votes I think he would have. This is a whacked out interpretation of the Constitution and wouldn’t have stood up judicially. It’s certainly not an interpretation you would extend to Kamala or any other democratic VP in the future. I wouldn’t. It would be the death of our democracy. We all lose no matter what side did it.


Fair play!