Republican Lawmaker Files Lawsuit Against Mike Pence To Have Presidential Election Overturned

A Republican lawmaker has filed a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence to have the results of the 2020 presidential election overturned.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) filed a lawsuit along with Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward and other Republican officials against Pence, pushing to have a federal law governing the role the office of the vice president plays in accepting the Electoral College results declared to be unconstitutional.

The Electoral Count Act of 1887 put in place procedures for the counting of electoral votes in Congress. This comes as Congress is preparing to meet to certify the Electoral Collage results on January 6. As president of the senate, Pence’s role will be to “open all the certificates, which are the papers containing the Electoral College results from each state, in the presence of both houses of Congress.

Though the election has been called for Joe Biden, Donald Trump and his supporters claim that mass voter fraud took place.

The 1887 law that Gohmert is challenging states that “all the certificates and papers purporting to be certificates,” a provision which is intended to prevent any vice president, who may have a biased interest in the outcome of an election, from refusing to present to Congress Electoral College votes he or she objects to. In his lawsuit, Gohmert argues that these provisions unconstitutionally limit the vice president’s “exclusive authority and sole discretion under the Twelfth Amendment to determine which slates of electors for a State, or neither, may be counted.”

Gohmert is hoping this lawsuit will result in Pence being given the power to reject Electoral College votes from key battleground states where there are allegations of voter fraud and accept an “alternative” slate of electors from those states.

Experts in electoral law have since told The Hill that they do not expect this lawsuit to be a success.

“The idea that the Vice President has sole authority to determine whether or not to count electoral votes submitted by a state, or which of competing submissions to count, is inconsistent with a proper understanding of the Constitution,” said Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University.

“I’m not at all sure that the court will get to the merits of this lawsuit, given questions about the plaintiffs’ standing to bring this kind of claim, as well as other procedural obstacles,” he added.

Check out a copy of the lawsuit for yourself below.