The GOP’s “Little Secret” to Steal the White House

It could be right there in the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, and the GOP would love to use it to install the convicted felon back into the White House.

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

At last week’s 21st-century Nazi rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the convicted felon vying for his old job announced the following:

I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House. Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret. We will tell you what it is when the race is over.

The “he” the adjudicated rapist was talking about is House Speaker Mike Johnson.

What could be that “little secret”?

Is it just another vapid non-sequitur evidence of the twice-impeached treasonous sycophant’s deteriorating mental capacity? Or could there actually be a “secret plan” in the works with the House Speaker that Vladimir Putin’s poodle divulged right out in the open?

Unfortunately, the answer is likely the latter, and it could hinge on the 12th Amendment to the US Constitution, which states:

The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote[.]

This means if neither the orange fascist nor Vice President Kamala Harris reach the 270-electoral college threshold necessary to secure the presidency, the election is decided in the House of Representatives.

It’s the last sentence of the amendment that makes this prospect so dire: “The votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote[.]”

Republicans control 26 of 50 House delegations, and if we think they would cast their votes for Kamala Harris, I’d like to move where you’re living.

On the contrary, whether they personally like him or not, they would gleefully make the Russian patsy running to keep himself out of prison president again--voters be damned. It would be the only assurance the massive tax-breaks gravy train to their ultra wealthy would continue.

As Thom Hartmann explained recently:

Unlike in 2020, there are no longer Mitt Romneys, Adam Kinzingers, or Liz Cheneys in Congress who could gum up the works. The GOP is today unified in its assertion that voter fraud handed Joe Biden the 2020 presidency: this is the perfect setup for the scenarios I’m describing, and Republicans know it. They created it, in fact.

Elie Mystal, writing in The Nation, explained:

If enough states refuse to certify the results of the election and submit a slate of electors — with the Supreme Court’s blessing — the math is not actually hard for Trump. Let’s say Vice President Kamala Harris wins the bare majority of Electoral College votes necessary, 270, but the Republican legislature in Wisconsin refuses to submit the state’s 10 electors by the deadline. In this scenario, the new total number of electors becomes 528, not 538 — and Trump needs only 264 electoral votes to “win.” If you take Wisconsin and Nevada’s six electors out of the mix, Trump needs only 262 electoral votes to “win.” He’ll likely achieve those numbers without having to win one of the “blue wall” states.

It’s possible to play with the numbers until you find a “tie” scenario at which point the contingent election goes to the House of Representatives, but the far more likely situation is that Trump decreases the overall number of electoral votes available until he can claim a majority of the ones remaining.

This was the plot republicans had in mind four years ago when then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to go along with it. Had he declined to certify the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021 (remember that day?), we would have seen the 12th Amendment enacted — and Joe Biden would never have become president.

But January 6 is the final step in the process of electing a president.

December 11 is the “Certificate of Ascertainment” deadline. This is the last day state governors can submit their certified slates of electors to the National Archives. If a governor — or several — fails to submit, their electors aren’t counted, reducing the number, and, therefore, reducing the likelihood either candidate hits the 270 mark, throwing the election into the House.

Think this wouldn’t happen?

Investigative reporter Greg Palast recently wrote:

In 2020, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia told Trump he had no authority under Georgia law to overturn the election. Here’s the bad news: the law has changed in Georgia. Kemp, who’s now kissed and made up with Trump, can not only refuse to certify the election; he could be required to withhold the certification if Harris wins.

A new law has empowered Georgia’s State Election Board, controlled by MAGA extremists, to reject any county’s results. This is scary: the Board already voted a resolution saying that, in 2020, they would not have certified the vote in Fulton County. That’s Atlanta. If even one county is not certified, then the Governor is not allowed to certify any Electors to the Electoral College. In that case, Harris loses Georgia’s 16 Electoral votes.

Elie Mystal wrote:

In 2020, Nancy Pelosi was speaker of the House. If states had tried to get cute and not submit their electors by the December 11 deadline, Pelosi would just have extended the deadline. But Speaker Johnson surely won’t. If electors are not submitted by December 11, he’ll likely declare the process “over” and say that the electors appointed by that date are the only ones allowed to vote for president.

He added:

Crucially, Johnson can do this even if Republicans lose the House and Johnson is removed from power. The new House isn’t sworn in until January 3. As the violent MAGA people in your family already know, January 6 is when the House certifies the results of the Electoral College, but that is just a ceremonial day. By the time we get to January 6, the electors are supposed to have voted. December 11 is the deadline for appointing electors, December 25 the deadline for voting. Mike Johnson will still be in charge on both of those days.

Think the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 was a fluke?

In today’s toxic electoral atmosphere, expect MAGA loyalists to descend on state capitals to try to upset the process once again.

As Greg Palast explained:

Ali Alexander, founder of the Trump front group “Stop the Steal,” along with Alex Jones, was Trump’s designated leader of the illegal march on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. But weeks before, on November 19, Alexander led a mob outside the Georgia Governor’s mansion in Atlanta. Our cameraman Zach D. Roberts, filmed Alexander shouting through a bullhorn, “Unless they give us Trump, we’re going to burn the whole shit on fire!”

But let’s say governors adhere to the procedure and submit their slates by the deadline. Certified electors must meet at their respective state capitals by December 17 — another opportunity for chaos to ensue.

Too wacky to happen?

In the 2000 presidential election between then-Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush — before the United States Supreme Court demanded Miami-Dade County, Florida halt its mandated recount — there was the infamous “Brooks Brothers Riot” wherein Republican Congressmen John E. Sweeney incited a mob inside the county board of elections office to chants of “Shut it down!” Rioters wearing Brooks Brothers suits stoked enough fear in elections officials to get the counting stopped— fulfilling the rioters’ objective. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that rioters were “50-year-old white lawyers with cell phones in Hermès ties” and Republican party staffers.

But Rep. Sweeney hadn’t acted alone.

None other than GOP super-villain Roger Stone worked in tandem with then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who had knocked about 80,000 African American voters off the state voting roles, and ordered the vote counting stopped. (Let’s not fail to mention Bush’s brother Jeb was Florida’s governor at the time.)

As David Barstow and Somini Sengupta wrote for the New York Times on November 28, 2000, just before the Supreme Court intervened:

The president of Florida’s Senate said today that Gov. Jeb Bush had indicated his willingness to sign special legislation intended to award Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes to his brother Gov. George W. Bush of Texas even as the election results were being contested.

Bush went on to “win” Florida by just 537 votes.

Had this not occurred, Al Gore would have been president, and warnings of Osama bin Laden’s imminent attack on the United States that culminated on September 11, 2001 likely wouldn't have gone ignored, preventing two illegal wars George W. Bush had been planning on waging to ensure re-election since before he even set foot in the White House.

Let’s slide back ever further.

In the 1876 election, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes became the 19th president despite losing the popular vote and the Electoral College against Democrat Samuel Tilden.

As reported in The Atlantic:

There were 369 electoral votes, of which 185 were necessary to a choice. Of the 369 votes, Samuel J. Tilden confessedly had 184, lacking but one of the required majority. Rutherford B. Hayes had only 163 undisputed votes, but his friends claimed, in addition, the votes of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina, with an aggregate of 22 electors, which would make his total vote 185, precisely the number needed to secure his inauguration. It was thus necessary that the votes of all these disputed States should be counted for General Hayes to make him President, whereas, should Mr. Tilden gain but one of these, or but one vote from one of them, the victory would be his.

In exchange for electors agreeing to shift their votes to him, Hayes struck a backroom deal to withdraw federal soldiers from the post-Civil War South enforcing reconstruction laws. His (s)election meant the end of reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow laws that culminated in the iconic Civil Rights movement nearly a century later.

This is particularly ironic when we consider Hayes was a former Union soldier who fought to protect the very thing he then destroyed as president.

Then-Chief Justice John Rehnquist wrote in the 2000 Bush v Gore SCOTUS decision that overturned the Florida Supreme Court’s recount order:

The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States… [T]he state legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by state legislatures in several States for many years after the framing of our Constitution.

This is precisely on what the GOP is hinging this week’s election — only one of its member is blabbing it for the befuddled public to hear.

Why else would the bloviating spray-tanned narcissist be stalking states he has no chance of winning, like New York, when his campaign should be engaging in voter outreach to still-undecided voters? Maybe it feels Mike Johnson’s “secret plan” will work this time.

There is still hope, though.

POTUS 45 who wants to be 47 is not in office and cannot leverage Congress and federal agencies like he could in 2020.

While it doesn’t discount the shenanigans at the state level, the new Congress is sworn in January 3. If Democrats win a Hous emajority and Hakeem Jefferies succeeds Mike Johnson as the new Speaker, the chances of an upset are minimal. But if Johnson remains Speaker…

Also, Kamala Harris is the President of the Senate; it is she who will be presiding over the certification ceremony January 6. We do not have to wonder if she is going to honor her oath to faithfully uphold the Constitution as we did when her predecessor Mike Pence was faced with the opportunity to disregard it.

That’s where the amendment to the 1887 Electoral Count Act passed in 2022 comes in. It reduces the vice president’s role to simply a ceremonial one, so the temptation that faced VP Pence over whether or not to refuse certain electors’ slates in 2020 is eliminated. Unless otherwise specified in a state’s laws or constitution in effect on election day, it identifies each state’s governor as responsible for submitting his or her state’s certificate of ascertainment. Congress will not accept another official’s slate, thereby obviating the potential for multiple state officials to submit competing slates. The amendment also raises the threshold for an objection to states’ electors from just one to 20% of the members of each chamber.

As Elie Mystal explained in The Nation:

Its most important provisions essentially provide a legal fast track for election-certification challenges, which would take these disputes out of partisan legislatures and meandering state courts and put them in front of federal judges.

However, he warned:

That might sound comforting, but it shouldn’t. Putting any of these challenges in front of federal judges sets them on a collision course with the Republican-controlled Supreme Court. As John Roberts and his cabal of antidemocratic goons (and their wives) have repeatedly shown this year, the Supreme Court is willing to do Trump’s dirty work. In 2020, the Supreme Court rejected almost all of Trump’s various nonsensical claims to overturn that election. But I wouldn’t be so sure they’ll do so again, especially because this time the Trump people will not necessarily be asking the court to overturn the results of a state’s election. They’ll just be asking them to delay certification of those results, until some later date. In addition to ruling for the Trumpers outright, the court could simply delay hearing the case for as long as the delay is helpful for Trump. The Supreme Court can put its thumb on the scale for Trump simply by pretending to “stay out of it” and allowing the “process” to play itself out.

The best scenario is for VP Harris to win in a landslide, which would make it much more difficult for republicans to challenge the numbers in the courts.

If it isn’t a landslide, though…

Well, we just have to hope the guardrails in place are still strong enough.

As Elie Mystal ended his Nation piece:

Republican officials and judges will have to be forced to honor the results of the pretend election for Harris to have any shot of winning the real one.