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2020 election results map
Now we know why state Republicans continue spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on Michael Gableman’s discredited investigation attempting to prove President Biden’s election victory in Wisconsin was fraudulent long after everybody but Donald Trump has moved on from the defeated president’s fantasies.
It’s all just a public distraction to cover up the evidence now emerging that Republican party officials throughout the state were the ones engaging in real vote fraud by submitting counterfeit documents to the U.S. Senate and the National Archives falsely claiming they were “duly elected and qualified” Trump electors casting Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for the loser of the election.
The fake electors included then Republican Party chairman Andrew Hitt, party chairs for the 1st, 5th, 6th and 8th congressional districts, a Republican appointee to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, members of the Republican National Committee and some county chairs.
Secret Meeting
The Republicans met secretly at the state Capitol to fraudulently declare themselves the state’s rightful electors on Dec. 14, 2020. That was the same day Wisconsin’s real slate of Democratic electors were meeting in the Capitol to officially confirm Biden as the winner. About an hour before Republicans met, the Wisconsin Supreme Court dismissed the last of Trump’s evidence-free lawsuits challenging those election results, so Republicans no longer could claim they weren’t aware of who had won the election.
It was a ridiculous cartoon plot to steal the election devised by Trump’s campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a ridiculous cartoon figure of the man who once was a respected federal prosecutor putting mobsters behind bars. Now he was working for the closest thing America has ever had to a mobster president determined to stay in office through mob violence if necessary, the Constitution be damned.
The scariest part is Rudy’s crazy scheme, joined by prominent state Republicans, came closer to working than anyone realized. On Dec. 14, 2020, the day those Republican officials met in Madison to sign fraudulent documents claiming to be their state’s electors, Republicans in four other states Biden won—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — were doing the same thing. Pennsylvania and New Mexico Republicans sent more honest documents to the federal government declaring themselves to be Trump electors only if Biden’s victories in their states were overturned.
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Pence Said No
So far, it just sounds like another pointless, goofball exercise by Giuliani whose absurd lawsuits claiming Biden’s election was fraudulent without any evidence were thrown out of courts throughout the land including the U.S Supreme Court. But all that kept it from working was something no one knew existed, the previously undiscovered backbone of Mike Pence.
Pence was key to using Giuliani’s fraudulent slates of fake Republican electors to overthrow the election. Pence would be presiding over the joint session of Congress certifying Biden’s election on Jan. 6. There were multiple ways the schemers surrounding Trump told the president Pence could use his authority as vice president to steal the election for Trump.
He could throw out the electoral votes from the five Biden states with conflicting slates of electors, leaving Trump with a majority of electoral votes. He could refer the dueling slates of electors back to the state legislatures to be resolved. All five states including Wisconsin had extremely gerrymandered Republican legislatures that would be happy to choose fraudulent slates of Republican electors to return Trump to office. The last resort would be to refer the dispute over electors to the House of Representatives.
You might think the House would support Biden’s election since Democrats are the majority, but you’d be wrong. Under the Constitution, when the House resolves presidential election disputes, each state congressional delegation gets one vote. Republicans control 26 state delegations, Democrats 23 and Pennsylvania is tied.
How Close We Came
Then Pence spoiled everything by refusing to claim Constitutional authority he didn’t have to interfere with the official certification of Biden’s election. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book Peril, Pence told this to Trump right to his screaming, red face on Jan. 5.
That’s how close we may have come to unconstitutionally remaining under the most corrupt, dishonest president in history who’d been overwhelmingly rejected by a record 81 million American voters following four dangerous years of presidential contempt for the fundamental principles of American democracy.
Unfortunately, Republican leaders have yet to take any steps toward becoming a decent American political party again. Trump, the most divisive, unpopular president in history, remains the party’s most likely nominee in 2024. Leading Republican alternatives like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are just as bad.
Fair elections and equal voting rights have become partisan issues embraced only by Democrats who drove violent racist lynch mobs out of their party nearly 60 years ago.
Elected Republicans fear alienating Trump’s most violent, unAmerican supporters if they do the same. That’s why support for American democracy has to be the most important issue in every election from now on.
