Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, outside the Capitol, December 3, 2020.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Deputy Louie Gohmert became the latest Republican to file a lengthy process to try to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s victory – this time suing Vice President Mike Pence.
The last legal effort, presented on Sunday, came from Gohmert, a Texas congressman with eight terms, along with 11 Arizona residents who had been nominated by that state’s Republican Party to serve as voters.
It takes place a week before the date set for Pence to chair a joint session of Congress, where the votes of the Electoral College for Biden and President Donald Trump will be counted.
Voters had already voted two weeks before. Biden received 306 electoral votes – 36 more than he needed to win – while Trump received 232.
The suit asks federal judge Jeremy Kernodle, appointed by Trump in eastern Texas, to declare that Pence has “exclusive authority and exclusive discretion” to decide which electoral votes for a given state should be counted.
Although pro-Trump voters in some Biden-vanquished states have symbolically voted on their own ballots, experts say these votes have no legal weight.
The Republican complaint states that part of the 1887 Electoral Counting Law must be declared unconstitutional, as it conflicts with the 12th Amendment.
This amendment contains “exclusive dispute resolution mechanisms,” the suit states, including that “Vice President Pence determines which voter list of votes counts, if any, for that state.”
Jurists quickly dismissed the Republican lawsuit as hopelessly far-fetched.
“No, it won’t work,” tweeted election law expert Rick Hasen at the University of California, Irvine.
“The process will go nowhere,” wrote Joshua Geltzer, executive director of the Institute of Defense and Constitutional Defense at Georgetown University.
“This is crazy,” tweeted Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.
Spokesmen for Pence’s office did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The suit also claims that “public reports” “highlighted widespread electoral fraud” in battle states, citing a document written by White House adviser Peter Navarro, which includes several claims that have been rejected in other cases or unmasked by fact-checkers .
Trump refused to give in to Biden. He falsely claimed that he won the race while publicly pressuring Republican lawmakers to “come forward and fight for the presidency”. At the same time, Trump is spreading unfounded and debunked conspiracy theories, alleging widespread electoral and electoral fraud.
Some House Republicans have declared that they will contest the election results when Congress meets to count the electoral votes on January 6. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Reportedly asked that his caucus not make similar objections.
Any objections to electoral votes must be submitted in writing and signed by at least one member of the House and one of the Senate. If an objection arises, the two chambers consider the objection separately.
The Trump campaign and several of the president’s allies have launched dozens of attempts to challenge election results in several undecided states. None of these legal efforts has succeeded in invalidating votes for Biden or in reversing the results of any state’s presidential elections.
The United States Supreme Court in early December rejected an offer by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue four decisive states because of changes they made to voting procedures. Trump had called that process “the big one”.