At least 50 Donald Trump electors were illegally seated as Electoral College members

More evidence surfaces as calls mounted to challenge congressional ratification of Electoral College vote
From: Salon

More than 50 Electoral College members who voted for Donald Trump were ineligible to serve as presidential electors because they did not live in the congressional districts they represented or held elective office in states legally barring dual officeholders.

That stunning finding is among the conclusions of an extensive 1,000-plus page legal briefing prepared by a bipartisan nationwide legal team for members of Congress who were being urged to object to certifying the 2016 Electoral College results today.

“Trump’s ascension to the presidency is completely illegitimate,” said Ryan Clayton of Americans Take Action, who is promoting the effort. “It’s not just Russians hacking our democracy. It’s not just voter suppression at unprecedented levels. It is also [that] there are Republicans illegally casting ballots in the Electoral College, and in a sufficient number that the results of the Electoral College proceedings are illegitimate as well.”

Republicans like to talk all the time about people voting illegally,” Clayton continued. “We have a list of a bunch of Republicans that allegedly voted illegally in the Electoral College. Pam Bondi is the attorney general of the state of Florida and the Florida Constitution says that you cannot hold two offices. And she holds the office of Attorney General and she holds the office of federal elector in the Electoral College. That is a violation of the law. That is a violation of the Constitution. And the vote that she cast in this election is illegal.”

A joint congressional session was scheduled to ratify the 2016 Electoral College vote today. While there have been calls to challenge that certification—including one women-led effort saying Trump’s victory is due to voter suppression targeting people of color—the analysis that scores of Trump electors were illegally seated, and the additional finding that most states won by Trump improperly filed their Electoral College “Certificates of Vote” with Congress, is unprecedented.

Their research and report grew out of the legal activities surrounding the December 19 Electoral College meeting, where Clayton and others urged Republican electors to reject Trump saying they had a constitutional responsibility to pick a more qualified president.

Clayton was hoping that sufficient numbers of Republicans in Congress would not vote to ratify the Electoral College results, thus depriving Trump of the 270 Electoral College votes he needs to win the presidency. If that transpires, the House would then decide between the three top Electoral College vote-getters—Trump, Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell, he said. But before any of that could happen, there would had needed to be a formal challenge to ratifying the 2016 Electoral College results in today’s joint session of Congress, which is where the research finding that scores of Trump votes were illegally cast comes in.

“We have reason to believe that there are at least 50 electoral votes that were not regularly given or not lawfully certified (16 Congressional District violations and 34 Dual Office-Holder violations),” the executive summary of the Electoral Vote Objection Packet said. “The number could be over a hundred. We urge you to prepare written objections for January 6.”

“The compiling of the laws and evidence in this Electoral Vote Objection Package was completed by a national team of roughly 15 pro bono attorneys, law students, and legal assistants who represent no client or entity,” the summary said. “We are non-partisan—Democrat, Republican, and Independent. We live in different parts of the country, urban and rural, red states and blue states.”

Challenging the Electoral College

The Electoral College’s results have only been challenged twice since 1877. The most recent was in 2005, when an objection to Ohio’s Electoral College votes was filed by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, D-OH, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA. While that effort did not stop President George W. Bush’s reelection, it did force both chambers of Congress to debate for two hours before the Electoral College vote was ratified. Tubbs-Jones and Boxer used the podium to rail against GOP efforts to suppress the vote and disqualify ballots in communities of color.

The process for challenging the Electoral College vote is two-fold. First, a House member has to file a formal challenge and objection. Then one House member and one senator has to sign on, prompting each body to retire to their chambers for the two-hour debate.

The Electoral Vote Objection Packet briefing cites two main areas where 2016 Electoral College members were illegally seated and a third where their votes electing Trump were improperly sent to Congress.