The Increasingly Bizarre State of Election Fraud Litigation

Litigation around the 2020 election continues, and it’s taking increasingly more bizarre forms.

These efforts so far have all failed virtually uniformly. The number of back to back losses in court have already addressed the low hanging fruit so the only efforts still left are increasingly desperate and flailing. For example, Republican Rep Gohmert is suing Mike Pence:

On January 6th, a joint session of Congress will convene to formally elect the President. The defendant, Vice-President Pence, will preside. Under the Constitution, he has the authority to conduct that proceeding as he sees fit. He may count elector votes certified by a state’s executive, or he can prefer a competing slate of duly qualified electors. He may ignore all electors from a certain state. That is the power bestowed upon him by the Constitution.

They're literally arguing that a Vice President has an absolute right to choose who the next President is, regardless of what the elections said. And they're suing Pence himself to make this happen, even though their argument is that he supposedly already has that power? It's just not coherent. If their argument is correct, I'm not sure why previous Vice Presidents like Al Gore don't just declare themselves winners each election. I also don't know why we'd even bother with elections if Vice Presidents have full discretion to anoint.

To steelman the effort, there are indeed some legitimate questions that are still being litigated, for example whether a state supreme court can overturn a state legislature on the specific question of how presidential electors are assigned. The rest of the allegations have had plenty of opportunities to air their concerns in court, and no court thus far has found anything credible or even remotely approaching widespread enough to change the election.

Necessarily, the people who still believe that the election was stolen have had to spin up elaborate explanations for why the judiciary is not ruling in their favor. Lin Wood's accusation that John Roberts was bribed by Jeffrey Epstein (Who Wood claims is still alive) with minor children is just the latest example. It changes all the time too, just a few days ago Trump tweeted that the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger has a brother who "worked for China" because they found some random guy who happens to have the same last name.

My own position is a far simpler explanation. Trump is an egotistical narcissist whose public persona is built on an incapacity of ever admitting a loss. So in order to save face, he has spent months claiming election fraud on the off-chance he actually loses. He managed to hoodwink enough of his gullible followers (who are already susceptible to Q Anon conspiracies) to believe this, and they serve a significant enough of a voting block to move elections at the margin, so other Republicans have essentially been forced to play ball and continue the charade for fear of retribution from Trump.