2020 United States presidential election

“ We will follow our precedents, our laws, and our Constitution to the letter, and we will certify the winner of the 2020 Presidential election.
Criminal behavior will never dominate the United States Congress. This institution is resilient. Our democratic Republic is strong. The American people deserve nothing less. ”

“ It was easy to fact-check these allegations and demonstrate they were false.
For example, in Pennsylvania, approximately nine million people were registered to vote and approximately 6.8 million votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election. [275] Nevertheless, President Trump and his allies made numerous "more votes than voters" claims in Pennsylvania. Citing 2020 mail-in voting data tweeted by Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano, President Trump claimed that 1.1 million ballots had been "created" and counted improperly. ”

“ This 2020 presidential election has shone a bright light on the fact that states need to step up and properly reform their election processes, where needed, to deliver trustworthy results for all Americans. ”

“ Midterm elections have become the most expensive ones in the United States, and American-style democracy has lost its popular support. The cost of elections in the United States has soared again, with cumulative spending of the 2022 midterm elections exceeding more than 16.7 billion U.S. dollars. Political donations from billionaires accounted for 15 percent of the federal total, up from 11 percent in the 2020 election cycle. ”

“ He is co-author with Jack Goldsmith of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency (2020) , books on federal campaign finance and numerous articles on law and politics for legal periodicals. He has co-authored numerous bipartisan reports on policy and legal reform, including “The American Voting Experience: Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration” (Presidential Commission on Election Administration, 2014) ; “The State of Campaign Finance in the United States” (Bipartisan Policy Center, 2018) ”

“ Donald Trump won in numerous States that allowed no-excuse absentee voting in 2020, including Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming. [32]
On election night 2020, the election returns were reported in almost exactly the way that Stepien and other Trump Campaign experts predicted, with the counting of mail-in and absentee ballots gradually diminishing President Trump's perceived lead. As the evening progressed, President Trump called in his campaign team to discuss the results. ”

“ You have an election day and they don't want votes cast after election day and they want the process to be an honest one. It's so important. We want an honest election. We want an honest count and we want honest people working back there, because it's a very important job.
So that's the way this country is going to win. That's the way the United States will win, and we think we will win the election very easily. We think there's going to be a lot of litigation, because we have so much evidence, so much proof, and it's going to end up perhaps at the Highest Court in the Land. ”

“ The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.
When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. ”

“ On December 18th, for example, President Trump urged his supporters and Republican Senators to “get tougher,” tweeting “ [w] e won the Presidential Election, by a lot. FIGHT FOR IT! Don’t let them take it away,” and adding on December 22nd “ [t] he truth is we won the election by a landslide. We won it big.” [20] The next week, President Trump falsely tweeted that the “United States had more votes than it had people voting, by a lot. This travesty cannot be allowed to stand. It was a Rigged Election, one not even fit for third world countries!” ”

“ A Gallup survey in October 2020 shows that only 19 percent of the Americans surveyed are "very confident" about the presidential election, a record low since the survey was first conducted in 2004. According to a poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal in June 2022, six out of 10 Americans feel pessimistic about achieving the American dream. ”

“ Prior to the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, along with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, urged President Trump to embrace mail-in voting as potentially beneficial to the Trump campaign. ”

“ I want to echo the Majority Leader’s statements tonight that we need to act as Americans, as “we the people,” and that is what I am doing—fighting to ensure the election integrity of this nation so that all Americans can have trust in the process that defines us. I am fighting today to preserve our democratic republic through a thoughtful debate on the obvious flaws of the 2020 election process. ”

“ When Americans vote for a presidential candidate on election day, they are actually casting votes for that candidate's proposed presidential electors to participate in the electoral college. After a State certifies its election results and announces a winner, it also issues a "certificate of ascertainment," which contains the names of the duly chosen electoral college electors. ”

“ Before election day in 2020, a reporter from The Atlantic interviewed Corman and other prominent Republicans in Pennsylvania about the possibility that President Trump would try to circumvent the popular vote in swing States by asking the legislatures to appoint Trump/Pence electors. ”

“ However, the U.S. society has been plagued by deep-rooted money politics, unchecked public opinion manipulation and rampant lies, and American democracy has further aggravated social division instead of bridging the increasingly polarized political differences. As a result, the American people enjoy their civil and political rights in name only.
Influence of money in electoral politics essentially makes it a money-led election. Money is the driving force of American politics. America’s money politics has distorted public opinion, turning elections into a “one-man show” for the rich. ”

“ While our actions today may not reverse the blatant failure of some states to properly vet the votes, this is an important venue to discuss the concerns of the many people who are dissatisfied with the 2020 election process. ”

“ For ordinary voters, casting their votes to a third party or an independent candidate is nothing more than wasting the ballot. In effect, they can only choose either the Democratic candidate or the Republican one.
⁠In the context of Democratic-Republican rivalry, the general public's participation in politics is restricted to a very narrow scope. For ordinary voters, they are only called upon to vote and are forgotten once they have cast their ballots. Most people are just "walk-ons" in the theater of election. ”

“ Article II of our Constitution, as modified by the Twelfth Amendment, governs election of the President. Article II created the electoral college, providing that the States would select electors in the manner provided by State legislatures, and those electors would in turn vote for the President. Today, every State selects Presidential electors by popular vote, and each State's laws provide for procedures to resolve election disputes, including through lawsuits if necessary. ”

“ At various times and to different degrees, party leaders have expressed a readiness to resort to these kinds of tactics as a matter of course. In 2021, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell stated that if his party won a majority in the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, he would not commit to acting on any Supreme Court nomination by President Biden in 2023 and indicated that it was “highly unlikely” he would agree to any such consideration in the 2024 presidential election year. ”

“ Ray La Raja, professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, noted in an article for The Atlantic that America's current system is democratic only in form, not in substance, as the nominating process is vulnerable to manipulation by plutocrats, celebrities, media figures and activists, while many presidential-primary voters mistakenly back candidates who do not reflect their views. ”

“ This evidence demonstrates that Fitton was in direct contact with President Trump and understood that he would falsely declare victory on election night and call for vote counting to stop. The evidence also includes an audio recording of President Trump's advisor Steve Bannon, who said this on October 31, 2020, to a group of his associates from China:
And what Trump's going to do is just declare victory, right? He's gonna declare victory. But that doesn't mean he's the winner. He's just gonna say he's a winner. . . . The Democrats, more of our people vote early that count. ”

“ Multiple challenges such as voting restrictions, election fraud, and loss of trust in government are accelerating the disintegration of American democracy. Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, writes that America's dysfunctional politics raises fears that the 2024 presidential election would again provoke deadly violence in the country. A large number of hot button issues continued to provoke public anger and questions on the legitimacy of the US political establishment. Many worried about how long American democracy could continue to function. ”

“ And, at 8:22 a.m., President Trump tweeted again, making a pitch for Congress to choose him, as if people's votes on election day and the electoral college didn't matter:
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, OUR COUNTRY, NEEDS THE PRESIDENCY MORE THAN EVER BEFORE—THE POWER OF THE VETO. STAY STRONG! [233]
President Trump's tweets made it clear that he thought the Republican State legislatures would simply deliver him victory. President Trump emphasized this point, writing twice that if Vice President Pence gave in, "we win." ”

“ L. Rev. Online 84, 86 (Apr. 2021) (noting that 45 States and DC permitted voters to request a mail-in ballot or automatically receive one in the 2020 election) ; Nathanial Rakich and Jasmine Mithani, “What Absentee Voting Looked Like In All 50 States,” FiveThirtyEight, (Feb. 9, 2021) , available at https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-absenteevoting-looked-like-in-all-50-states/ ”

“ However, he continues to work and receive hundreds of thousands of dollars consulting for President Trump and several other congressional candidates who continue to spread false voter fraud claims related to the 2020 election. ”

“ Second, there was no invitation by President Trump for Ukraine to "intervene" in the 2020 election. By the Majority's standard, any action taken by any president that may affect an election is itself "intervention" in that election. Assuredly, every elected official eligible for reelection gives thought to how their actions will improve or harm their future campaign. Asking the president of Ukraine to "look into" potential corruption involving Hunter Biden's employment at a notoriously corrupt company in Ukraine is not "corrupting democratic elections." ”

“ While we understand four members of the Georgia Senate are requesting the convening of a special session of the General Assembly, doing this in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.
State law is clear: the legislature could only direct an alternative method for choosing presidential electors if the election was not able to be held on the date set by federal law. In the 1960s, the General Assembly decided that Georgia's presidential electors will be determined by the winner of the State's popular vote. ”

“ Any request, however remote, that might benefit a politician politically is not an invitation to corrupt an election. To portray the President's request as corrupting the 2020 election is disingenuous, at best. As explained further below, the President did not ask for false information, and the fact that a key player in a corrupt Ukrainian company is the son of a politician does not transform a legitimate question into election interference. ”

“ He said he was a North Carolina Supreme Court justice. He's "retired." He's a real "scholar." He knows about this stuff.
And then he made a final comment about "'ballot drops' changed the election." He'd referenced this a number of times, that at 3 o'clock in the morning a whole bunch of ballots showed up in various swing States disproportionately in favor of Vice President Biden and that changed the outcome of the election. ”

“ I understand that many Americans who would never storm this Capitol don’t trust the integrity of the 2020 election, don’t think the States should have certified, don’t think we should have accepted the results from the States, and are insisting on more transparency and accountability.
In the 2016 elections, lest we forget, many Democrats objected to the results and distrusted the election. ”

“ First, opponents see term limits as setting up a dynamic in which the presidential election focuses not just on Court appointments in general but on the two guaranteed vacancies and appointments specifically. If two seats on the Supreme Court are guaranteed to open every four years, the Court might become even more of an issue in electoral politics than it currently is. ”

“ Once counties and States certified the election, or when it was nearly certain that they would, President Trump and his team’s focus largely shifted. President Trump and his team encouraged State legislators to meet in special sessions, if necessary, and choose electoral college electors who would vote for the Trump/Pence ticket. Ultimately, no State legislature took that step, but it was the basis for pressuring State officials from November through January 6, 2021. ”