Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and other Republicans filed a last-ditch lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence in a dubious attempt to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s election win, The Dallas Morning News reports.
Gohmert, Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward, and a group of Republican electors filed a lawsuit in federal court asking a judge to throw out rules for Congress’ affirmation of the Electoral College vote next week and allow Pence, who will preside over the session, to overturn Trump’s loss in several contested states.
The lawsuit claims that the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which effectively says that the vice president’s role in the proceedings is just ceremonial, violates the 12th Amendment, which allows for separate Electoral College votes for president and vice president.
Fake electors:
The lawsuit asks a judge to allow Pence to choose a fake alternate slate of Republican electors from several states instead of the ones officially affirmed by each of the states.
Despite Biden’s victory in states like Arizona and Georgia, Republicans held unauthorized meetings of electors to submit unofficial alternative slates of electors.
These slates do not actually carry any legal weight since they were not signed off by secretaries of state.
Legal experts mock lawsuit:
“If the Twelfth Amendment somehow gave the Vice President the power to unilaterally throw out electoral votes for the other guy in favor of their own party (and even themselves), one might think that one of them would’ve noticed by now,” said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “But I guess they were all just idiots.”
“No, this won’t work,” added Rick Hasen, a constitutional law expert at the University of California at Irvine.
