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Jan 6, a group of protesters gathers around the Capitol, some breaking in. They are under the impression they are demanding a recount and an investigation into fraud. Inside, a group of Trump loyalists inform the frightened Congressmen that they are demanding a corrected record, and there is no telling what they might do. A set of unfamiliar people, claiming to be electors, arrive and announce an alternative slate for Trump. Dissent is quashed by law enforcement, which says the situation is “dangerous” and that loud debate may draw attention. Pence walks in, and announces that in accordance with the text of the Constitution, he can verify electors. He verifies the new one. The people present do not know what to do, and do not oppose this move. Pence declares Trump as the continuing President.
Jan 7. News of this event comes out. America is immediately divided. Trump claims that he is President. Biden claims he won the election, and is now the president. Congressional Democrats move to invalidate the Jan 6 decision. Trump loyalists in Congress oppose the move strongly. Most Republicans aren’t sure what to do, and try to delay. A few days later, the first protests are organized and start. After nightfall they quickly descend into riots. MAGA counterprotests immediately follow. Mayors attempt to control the worst of it with riot police, but they increasingly struggle to control the crowds and opt to let the two sides have it out. News channels blast opposing viewpoints, and one-up each other in extreme language. Despite all this, things are eerily silent, and nothing really changes leading up to inauguration.
Jan 20. Trump arranges an inauguration in Washington DC. He deploys the National Guard around it. Biden, citing concerns for safety, withdraws to NYC and holds his inauguration there. Congressional Democrats go with him.
Jan 21. Biden, as President, orders the National Guard to defend him as he moves into the White House and displaces the pretender. Trump countermands that order. Both demand that the other be arrested. Some Guardsmen agree to support each side, and the civil war begins. What happens next depends on chance and individual conscience and is beyond predicting.
I hope I’ve made my point. The natural result of the plot was two people declaring their formal status as President at the same time. The moment one of them tries to exercise his executive authority you have a civil war. This is not particularly imaginative; this is what happens in history, over and over again, whenever you have a succession crisis that isn’t nipped in the bud. In reality, Trump backed down and the crisis ended. That was lucky. We were not guaranteed luck.
Thank you for typing that out.
I could have written the same thing about "wargaming" a stolen election from the opposition's perspective. Except we know that didn't happen, and I highly doubt it would have been any different had Pence refused to accept the electors from the states which cannot verify the results of their elections. The alternative slate of electors are not "unfamiliar people" anymore than the state-certified slate of electors are "unfamiliar people." The alternative slate were chosen due to how the process must play out given the outlined Constitutional process and deadlines. This has been done many times throughout US history. Trump's plan wasn't to simply accept the alternative slate of electors, it was to refuse to count the electors from some states and demand a debate and/or inquiry and if this failed to produce the required number of electoral college electors then the election would be thrown to the House, something which as been done multiple times in US history.
Why do you think the same comment would be wrong to have been written from the other perspective here? Eastman's plan wasn't to "undo the results of the election," it was contesting the results of the election.
Not really. Much like each string of events you wargamed, one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. At each of these stages, the escalation can fail for a variety of reasons, much like Trump simply stopping and going home to Florida.
Whether this was more dangerous than pushing the COVID hysteria, more dangerous than race riots and burning parts of cities down, more dangerous than state executives unilaterally and illegally changing election rules, so that it culminated in stealing an election isn't obvious to me. Much like you believe Democrats are justified in using whatever violence to stop it, the same could be said at the time for those who watched as an election was stolen from them. Otherwise, the narrative means one side always loses which is eventually untenable and we're seeing some of that now.
The description here is meant to evoke a plausible description of how the coup would be executed without being disrupted in the moment. In reality, it was disrupted in the moment, so explaining experientially what it would be like for the Congressmen on the ground matters. It’s not a contrast between this elector and that fake elector.
I think, in order for this statement to be supportable, you need two detailed examples. Then we can argue whether this was or was not comparable. But as it stands this is a bare assertion.
Contrast the Bush-Gore kerfuffle. Immediately after the election, Florida law and Gore demanded a recount, which was immediately performed. Gore contested that result to the Supreme Court, which was decided in December. By the time that electoral certification rolled around the affair had been decided. Trump also submitted lawsuits, but these were rejected quite early. The Supreme Court was not willing to listen to him. So, by the time Jan 6 came about, the affair had been decided.
What Eastman proposed to do was not a method of contesting results. The results were already contested, and contesting them had failed. He was proposing to replace the results.
The analogy here would be if Gore had tried to declare that he was actually President and that the Supreme Court case was decided unjustly. Could you explain, without reference to facts of the election (because facts are the subject being contested in court here, and Gore and Trump lost in court), on a procedural basis, why Gore’s hypothetical rejection here would be invalid while Trump’s would be valid? Or if both are valid, what are the necessary and just steps that would then be taken to fix things and get a President in the two weeks leading up to the inauguration? Or do we not get a new President at all?
Absolutely true. I’m assuming that a successful coup on Jan 6 emboldens Trump and makes him fear for his safety if he tries getting off the metaphorical tiger. If he seriously attempts to hold onto power, however, it’s extremely doubtful to me that Biden just accepts it (because this legitimizes every future attempt in the same vein) and then you wind up with men with guns trying to decide which authority to listen to. The nice version of this is that they all pick one side or the other, and the nasty version is that they split roughly down the middle.
Notably, Harris did not even attempt to contest the 2024 election, and most of the same “election stealing” was in place from the last time. With all due respect, I don’t have much patience for the claim that the election was stolen. It is extraordinarily shady and motivated reasoning. I understand that the event must have been very upsetting, but the truth has higher standards. So forgive me for not really engaging with that half of your post. I just don’t see anything there to talk about.
The elections in 1800 and 1826 were decided by the House. For discussion about alternative electors, you can look at the 1960 Hawaii slate of alternative electors which were accepted by VP Nixon over the certified electors. In so far as a VP decided whether to count votes, Thomas Jefferson decided to open and count the electoral votes from Georgia despite them being obviously fraudulent thus awarding himself the presidency (well, after the House determined Jefferson should be President after Aaron Burr attempted to take it for himself given both received the same number of votes).
For a detailed discussion of the VP exercising the power to reject or pick elector slates, here is a response to a criticism by John Eastman which lists historical examples as well as many law review articles which discuss the topic and also clarifies exactly what Eastman's plan and advice was about what was to happen in Jan 6. Calling this plan "a coup," to be frank, is ridiculous.
Trump filed election contests well within the legal deadlines. These election contests were not "rejected quite early," with 6 of 7 contests still pending by the date of the safe-harbor elector slate certification in December. In Georgia, the court flatly refused to put the state required hearing and processes onto the court docket which resulted in an appeal, an order to do force them to do that, and then the trial court simply refusing to do it and then declaring the contest moot after Jan. 6.
Gores theory was much more limited than Trumps. Gore requested hand-recounts in only 6 or so counties and he hoped those election offices would find the ballots he needed. And thus those counties were indeed finding those ballots until GOP protesters/lawyers/rioters broke into their Broward County office and stopped them from making up ballots. It was this "recount" effort which was stopped.
No, there are multiple levels to contesting election results at the state and federal level. The winner of an the presidential election is determined by the process outlined in the US Constitution. By the date which electors were required to be certified, 6 or 7 election contests were still pending. Holding otherwise would mean states are required to abide by the illegal or unconstitutional election results of other states and have no way of contesting this, especially post-Texas v Pennsylvania where the SCOTUS laughably claimed a state doesn't have a judiciable interest in the outcome of an election.
Which was foreseen and why there is specific language in the US Constitution, a short document, outlining a process in the case of contest election.
Gore didn't contest the electoral college vote. He could have. If he had and refused to count votes from Florida which would have resulted in neither candidate having the required majority electoral college votes, the election would be decided by state delegation from the House, as outlined in the US Constitution specifically to be a back-stop and ensure a winner would be determined during a contested election situation. Alternatively, the Congress could have set-up a commission to determine which votes they would count and for whom like they did in 1876. Alternatively, he could have counted an alternative elector slate and attempted to declare himself winner and then the joint-session would have decided what to do.
No. Most (I think all) states which were in dispute in 2020 either lost court battles over their illegal election process or made substantive changes to their laws which made the 2024 election better than the 2020 one. Also, there is a difference in kind between an election decided by 40,000 ballots in 3 states and millions of ballots across 8 or 9 states including the popular vote by approximately 2.5m ballots.
I've found people defending the 2020 election to be engaged in shady and motivated reasoning which essentially assumes the outcome, much like you do here and demanding a standard they know full well is impossible to meet even under the assumption substantial fraud took place. Additionally, they don't particularly care nor do they particularly have the knowledge about it anyway which makes dialogue about it mostly unproductive.
Under a defensible standard for election contests, i.e., making a showing that there are likely enough ballots in dispute which is higher than the difference in a race - interestingly enough the standard used by American courts everywhere except in 2020 where the standard was ignored or avoided, the 2020 election was stolen in the sense that it is impossible to truly determine the winner of the election. If you have interest, here is a relatively short article about the issue.
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