Georgia Capitol latest port in a storm for Giuliani’s state legislature tack
President Donald Trump’s personal lawyerRudy Giuliani came to the Georgia Capitol Thursday to repeat unfounded claims of widespread voter fraudand urge state legislators to use powers experts say they don’t have to appoint Georgia’s electors and hand the state’s Nov. 3 election to the president despite President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
“That power, right, obligation, is given to you by the founding fathers, deliberately,” the former New York City mayor told members of a special Senate Judiciary Subcommittee. “The founding fathers felt in a situation – I can’t imagine they thought of this one – but in a situation of complexity, the best place to decide would be with the institution closest to the people, and you’re the institution closest to the people.”
Giuliani’s argument is out of line with mainstream legal thought, said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University
“It’s honestly hard for me to describe something that is so unhinged from reality and groundless, in any kind of substantive legal theory,” he said. “What we’re witnessing is not only, I think, just kind of an anti-democratic attempt to substitute the Legislature’s will for people of Georgia’s will, but we’re seeing something that runs contrary to federal law.”
Trump’s allies made similar state-level arguments across the country in recent weeks, with an aim to overturn election results in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Wednesday Giuliani turned a Michigan state House hearing into a spectacle when he took over questioning witnesses.
At the heart of Giuliani’s flawed argument is the Electoral Count Act, which governs the Electoral College and vote countingThe law says if a state fails to make a choice on Election Day, then the state Legislature can appoint electors, said Bryan Sells, an Atlanta attorney specializing in voting rights and election law.
“That’s the small window opening that Giuliani is trying to get the Legislature to go through, but that only applies if the state has failed to make a choice on Election Day,” Sells said. “But of course, the people of Georgia did make a choice on Election Day. We all cast our votes, we were able to hold the election, a winner of that election has been determined, and there are procedures in place for resolving election disputes, and those are currently underway.”
Despite multiple recounts confirming Biden’s win, some Georgians feel the election was unfair to the president. A Monmouth poll released last month found 70% of Republicans believe Biden won due to voter fraud, a baseless claim that has been echoed by President Trump and his circle. Georgia’s two U.S. Senators have called for the secretary of state to resign over unspecified failures in the conduct of the Nov. 3 election.
The committee allowed select witnesses to take turns in the hearing room Thursday afternoon, with voters and poll workers describing anecdotal evidence of suspicious activity at the polls they claim is evidence of more widespread fraud.
Giuliani’s team showed a video they claim shows ballot-counting improprieties at State Farm Arena, where the Atlanta Hawks play. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office denies the video shows anything untoward. Trump retweeted the video, which had about 300,000 views when it was six hours old.
In a separate meeting earlier on Thursday, members of Raffensperger’s team continued to fight back against allegations of fraud or mismanagement.
“What we’re seeing so far is what I would kind of call the normal amount of — I don’t think fraud is the right word, I think I like to think about more kind of legal votes or illegal votes,” said Ryan Germany, general counsel for Raffensperger’s office
That’s the problem with GA, it’s normal to have voter and election fraud. GA anon
https://georgiarecorder.com/2020/12/04/georgia-capitol-latest-port-in-a-storm-for-giulianis-state-legislature-tack/