On the same day that top Trump adviser Stephen Miller declared during an appearance on Fox & Friends that a so-called “alternate slate of electors” would be casting votes for Donald Trump in swing states, a group of Republican leaders gathered under the pretense of casting electoral votes for Trump in Georgia, despite President-elect Joe Biden’s decisive win in the state. These Republicans participating in the Monday spectacle are not actual members of the electoral college, and their so-called electoral votes carry no legal weight — after three counts of every single ballot in the state, Georgia certified and then re-certified Biden’s win, delivering the state’s 16 electoral votes to the president-elect. Republicans don’t get to complain this basic reality out of existence.
Meanwhile, in another part of the GA State Capitol, 16 GOP electors cast ballots for Trump, declaring that "the contest of the election is ongoing." Photo via @HaistenWillis, who's reporting from the room. pic.twitter.com/xnPrBQIHsw
— Michelle Ye Hee Lee (@myhlee) December 14, 2020
The 16 Republicans participating in the fake electoral voting declared that “the contest of the election is ongoing,” a report says. To be clear: there is no presently available meaningful pathway for outgoing President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the outcome of the election. The Department of Homeland Security, Attorney General Bill Barr, and local election officials around the country have all confirmed that there is no legitimate evidence of outcome-altering election fraud. Conservative and liberal judges around the country have systematically rejected the Trump team’s arguments. When a Trump-backed case in which plaintiffs sought the invalidation of the election outcome in four swing states where Biden won recently arrived before the U.S. Supreme Court, not a single justice said that they’d have granted the plaintiffs’ demands.
David Shafer, the current chairperson of the Georgia Republican Party, defended the Monday Republican stunt in a Twitter statement, ludicrously talking as if there’s any reasonable reason to believe that the president’s fight against the election outcome has any chance of succeeding. Shafer commented as follows:
‘Because the President’s lawsuit contesting the Georgia election is still pending, the Republican nominees for Presidential Elector met today at noon at the State Capitol today and cast their votes for President and Vice President. Had we not meet today and cast our votes, the President’s pending election contest would have been effectively mooted. Our action today preserves his rights under Georgia law.’
Had we not meet today and cast our votes, the President’s pending election contest would have been effectively mooted. Our action today preserves his rights under Georgia law.
— David Shafer (@DavidShafer) December 14, 2020
Shafer is talking nonsense. The “Georgia law” that he’s supposedly so concerned about outlined the process for the selection of electoral college members for the state as has already taken place.
It’s official. Stacey Abrams tallies the votes of state electors and announces that Georgia casts all 16 of its electoral college votes to President-elect Joe Biden, the first time in 28 years a Democrat has carried the state in a presidential election. pic.twitter.com/RBj8fpOf2g
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) December 14, 2020
Georgia officials have repeatedly attested to the security of the electoral process in the state. Trump has alleged that officials have blocked a signature verification process for mail-in ballots in the state, but that’s just not accurate. A comprehensive signature verification process covering every single mail-in ballot in Georgia already took place. Meaningful re-checks of actual ballots are impossible because election workers separated envelopes (with the signatures) and ballots after initial verification was complete. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, has supported a re-check of envelopes, but Trump has still nonsensically complained about Kemp’s supposed complicity in (imaginary) fraud — or something — anyway.
There’s simply no systematic legitimacy to the president’s fraud claims.
