Here’s Greg Palast’s take on the threat covered in the Washington Post article.
“... there is, frighteningly, a way to overturn the election, but January 6 is too late. The day that should give any lover of democracy the shivers is December 11. That’s the date designated by the Constitution as the Certificate of Ascertainment deadline."
MAGA Militants to Riot on December 11
By Greg Palast
Palast’s latest film is Vigilantes Inc., America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, narrated by Rosario Dawson and Produced by Martin Sheen, George DiCaprio and Maria Florio (Oscar, Best Documentary).
Put it in your calendar: MAGA militants will riot on December 11.
This time, you won’t have to wait for January 6.
Why is December 11 the new January 6?
January 6 is the date the Constitution sets for the Vice President to read out each state’s submission of their Electoral College “electors.”
In 2020, President Donald Trump, after the voters said, “YOU’RE FIRED!” cooked up a scheme to hold onto the office he’d lost.
Trump’s whack-job plan was to order/cajole/bully/threaten his Vice President, ordering him to ignore the Constitution and reject Electoral votes from states Trump had lost.
Trump’s plot was cooked up by law professor John Eastman who told Agent Orange that VP Mike Pence could simply chuck Electoral College submissions in the garbage and accept fraudulent Electors scrounged up by Rudi Giuliani.
Now The Donald, The Rudi and The John may be sharing a prison cell—as all three face felony charges for their goof-ball would-be coup d’état.
But there is, frighteningly, a way to overturn the election, but January 6 is too late. The day that should give any lover of democracy the shivers is December 11. That’s the date designated by the Constitution as the Certificate of Ascertainment deadline.
If you have never heard of the “Certificate of Ascertainment” date, you’d better bone up. That’s the day by which every Governor must send the National Archives the final list of Electors to the Electoral College after that state “certifies” those votes. If the Certificate never arrives, the state gives away its Electoral votes.
Think about that. If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote, say, in Georgia, the Governor could withhold the certificate certifying Harris’ Electoral College representatives. (The Constitution gives that power to each Governor.)
If, as a result, neither Harris nor Trump gets that magical 270 Electoral votes, then the election gets tossed into the 12th Amendment process. Then, look out!
All Electoral College votes from every state are then tossed out. Under the 12th Amendment, the President will be chosen by a vote of the states—one vote per state.
That means that South Dakota gets one vote, California gets one vote and DC gets no vote at all. As Republicans control 26 state delegations, Trump wins. Hail to the Thief!
That’s where the riots come in. It was a waste of the Q-Anon Shaman’s gang jail time to have tried to hang Mike Pence, because the Constitution says The Vice President ,,,“…shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.”Note the word, “shall.”
There ain’t nothing in there that says the Veep can just say, “Nah, I’m not going to open the envelope from Georgia.” Trump hoped Pence would be like an actor at the Academy Awards who throws away the envelope with the winner’s name, announcing, “Naw! I’m not going to give Leonardo another one.”
If the insurrectionists had not taken Trump’s advice that, “It will be wild” on January 6, they could possibly have succeeded in overturning the election by stopping certification on December 11 through mayhem, chaos and intimidation in state Capitols.
What Governor would go along with not certifying their own state’s vote? 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.
Say what? 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, possibly pushing her below the 270 threshold. Then America gets dragged into the 12th Amendment swamp.
In swing state North Carolina, the GOP-controlled legislature voted a similar non-certification law, though it’s been held up by a federal court, subject to appeal.
There are likely to be other Republican governors who may hesitate to certify the vote if their Capitol is on fire on December 11, especially if Trump is calling for blood. You think he won’t?
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, 2020. 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 light the whole shit on fire!”
We should have paid attention.
This time, threats could become deeds—and not just in Atlanta. Look for well-planned “spontaneous” riots in swing state capitals won by Harris. Roberts, who goes undercover inside the violent Right, tells me, “They looked at January 6 as a victory. It’s practice.” He explains that the uber-Right knows how to create mayhem, especially where the police are secretly (or not so secretly) sympathetic, even in cahoots, with the insurrectionists.
In our film, Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, we’ve warned that MAGA fanatics have already this year challenged the right of 851,000 voters to have their ballots counted, overwhelmingly voters of color. That’s enough for them, if their challenges are rejected, to cry, “VOTER FRAUD!” – and physically prevent the Electoral certification process.
The Electors who are certified by a Governor must meet in their Capitols by December 17th, another chance for mayhem, a chance to stop the Electors from casting their ballots. Anything which delays their vote can disqualify a state’s Electoral votes which, in a close election, condemns us to 12th Amendment hell.
This is a whole lot of complex law involving parts of the Constitution you didn’t study in civics class—because we never thought we’d have a group of dedicated fascists (and that’s a polite description) who would use violence to twist the Constitution into a weapon to destroy democracy.
Can’t happen? As historian Dr. Stan Deaton explains in Vigilantes Inc., in 1876, a never-before used codicil of the Constitution disqualified one Democratic Electoral College member, allowing the Ku Klux Klan Democrats of the South to join forces with Republican industrialists to win the Presidency for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, though the Republican had actually lost both the popular and Electoral College votes.
Riots can and have elected our President. Recall the “Brooks Brothers riot” of 2000?
On November 22, 2000, election officials were trying to complete the count of ballots in Miami-Dade County. Democrat Al Gore was racking up the votes in Miami when a Republican Congressmen John E. Sweeney, joining the mob inside the Elections office, gave the signal to, “Shut it down!” Suddenly, the well-dressed rioters began to smash up the voting office. In fear for their lives, officials halted the vote count.
But there was something odd about these rioters. As the Wall Street Journal, of all papers, reported, the rioters were, “50-year-old white lawyers with cell phones in Hermès ties,” Republican Party staffers, guys in Brooks Brothers suits. This “spontaneous” riot was organized in advance for the GOP by convicted felon Roger Stone. And it worked. Florida’s Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris stopped the count in Miami and statewide, declaring Bush the victor by just 537 votes. Had the riot not stopped the Miami-Dade count, Al Gore would have been elected President.
The GOP and MAGA Right know this: riots work. And if there a few dead bodies along the way, including the corpse of our Body Politic, hey, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Help us warn America. We are raising funds for free community showings and an education campaign in battleground states—the prime targets of the vigilantes.
Join me at theater screenings of Vigilantes Inc. in Madison (Oct 17), Atlanta (Oct 25)—and Chicago, Oct 21, 6pm at Rainbow PUSH Headquarters.
Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and the book and documentary,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
His latest film is Vigilantes Inc.: America's New Vote Suppression Hitmen Support The Palast Investigative Fund with a tax-deductible donation and keep our work alive.