Republican-trend researcher Rasmussen invoked a quote attributed to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on a Twitter topic on Sunday, suggesting that Vice President Pence could try to overturn the presidential election results.
“Whoever votes does not decide anything. Whoever counts the votes decides everything. – Stalin ”, tweeted the researcher, before proceeding to sketch a scenario in which Pence refuses to certify the results in undecided states.
At that moment, the Presidency will be in your hands.
And nothing prevents Pence, under the authority (plenary and unappealable) that he was given as President of the Senate, to refuse to open and count the certificates of the six states in dispute.
2/4
– Rasmussen reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) December 27, 2020
According to the 12th Amendment: “[T]votes will then be counted[.] … The person with the most votes for President, will be the President[.]”
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4/4
More here – https://t.co/ehnnu84Lgi
– Rasmussen reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) December 27, 2020
Supporters of President Trump
Donald Trump The New York Post’s editorial board urges President Trump to ‘start thinking’ about Georgia’s runoff instead of canceling the elections. presented similar arguments that Pence, as president of the Senate, has the power to reject the results of the Electoral College.
However, the theory is based on a misreading of the US code that simply authorizes the vice president to call on states to present their electoral votes if they do not do so by the fourth Wednesday of December, according to The Washington Post.
“The vice president should not control the outcome of the counting process for electoral votes in the states. This is true both from the perspective of the Constitution and the Electoral Counting Act, “Edward Foley, a professor of law at Ohio State University, told The Hill via email.
“The vice president chairs the joint session, but does not decide which electoral votes to count,” he added, noting that “it was clearly understood … that the vice president could be a candidate in the election under consideration, and they did not want to that this conflict of interest affects the outcome. ”
T. Greg Doucette, Trump’s lawyer and critic who frequently questions the president’s ability to legally contest the election results, tweeted that “Pence has no power to ‘attack’ anything. He opens the envelopes, delivers the certificates to the cashiers, the cashiers count. “
Not
538 voters were nominated; 270 EVs are needed to win now
Pence has no power to “strike” anything. He opens the envelopes, delivers the certificates to the cashiers, the cashiers count
Congress, by separate majority of votes in each chamber, can attack EVs as it sees fit https://t.co/HUMW7ULoJ5
– T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) December 22, 2020
As for the quote attributed to Stalin, often invoked as a warning against totalitarianism, it is questioned whether the Soviet leader actually said it. A variation of it appears in Russian in a 2002 memoir by Stalin’s secretary, Boris Bazhanov, who attributed it to his former chief discussing a vote by the Central Committee of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party.
The Hill contacted Rasmussen for comment.
Updated at 15h09