Republicans to be rabblerousers and challenge Wisconsin?

image.png

Do any of you guys know the details of the Safe Harbor statute and congressional procedure?

It seems to me, as far as I understand both the statute and parliamentary procedure, that the Safe Harbor statute having provided that any electoral slate duly certified by Dec. 8 will be accepted, that any challenges to those slates when Congress officially counts the electoral vote on Jan. 6 will not be in order.

That is, even if some members of the House and Senate do sign onto a challenge (and it takes one from each chamber), that challenge will not be in order procedurally, and the Vice President (presiding over the joint session in his role as President of the Senate) should properly rule it out of order, so that the two chambers would not have to recess into their separate caucuses to vote separately on the challenge.

If VP Pence did not do so, anyone should be able to raise the objection that the motion is out of order, and the question could be referred to whomever serves as the parliamentarian of the joint session. The parliamentarian's decision -- whatever it might be -- could be challenged, but overridden only by a majority vote...normally; I don't have any idea what the parliamentary procedure for joint sessions of Congress actually is.

I could be wrong about all this. I'm speculating from general, not specific, knowledge. But it seems to me that potentially only Wisconsin's electoral slate is procedurally challengeable, because only it was not certified by the Safe Harbor day.

H2
H3
H4
3 columns
2 columns
1 column
Join the conversation now