• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Big Picture>
  3. election 2020>

Trump puts fresh pressure on Pence to break the rules and upend the election

David Hawkings
January 05, 2021
Vice President Mike Pence

Vice President Pence has tried, unsuccessfully, to explain his role in counting the electoral votes to President Trump.

Megan Varner

President Trump on Tuesday ratcheted up the pressure on Vice President Pence to join in his unprecedented plot to so discredit democracy that they purloin themselves a second term.

Pence continued to remain quiet and out of sight, a day ahead of the joint session of Congress to formally tabulate the 306 legally certified electoral votes making Joe Biden the 46th president and Kamala Harris the 49th vice president. Pence is supposed to preside in his role as president of the Senate and his office made definitive only Tuesday morning that he will show up at the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.

"The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors," Trump declared falsely on Tuesday, magnifying on Twitter the wholly incorrect belief that Pence can wield his gavel at will to overturn the results of the election.


"Totally untrue," William & Mary law professor Rebecca Green said. "That's just now how the law works."

Trump's tweet about Pence came half an hour after another tweet urging his supporters to come to Washington to protest the Electoral College count, essentially seditious calls by an incumbent president to disrupt the orderly ascension of his successor. Thousands of his allies are already in town, many thousands more are expected, and the D.C. National Guard has been mobilized to keep order.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

On Monday night Trump used the final rally of the 2020 campaign — meant to excite supporters in Georgia ahead of twin Senate elections that will decide the partisan balance of power at the Capitol — to apply another measure of public arm-twisting on the vice president.

"I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you," Trump told the crowd, which responded with cheers. "Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him as much."

Pence has made sometimes obsequious loyalty to his boss the defining characteristic of his term. Unless he chooses to duck the moment, the House and Senate meeting to count the votes will put him at the center of the clear choice facing every Republican in the room — between continued fealty to Trump or a sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.

A law enacted in 1877, which sets the rules for the day, makes clear Pence has no choice but to take the second course. The presiding officer's role is that of a master of ceremonies, not an arbiter of disputes. He helps open the envelopes containing the electoral votes of the 50 states and announce their contents. He assigns the House and Senate to spend two hours debating any challenges supported by at least one lawmaker from each chamber. He announces their decisions and, when the disputes are ended, he announces the electoral vote grand totals.

Pence is expected to carry out the script and has not said or done anything to signal he will exceed his limited authority by siding with the Trump loyalists working to delay and disrupt the count with unfounded claims against the integrity of the electoral votes in five states central to Biden's victory.

The vice president "shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election," his office said in a statement last week, and "welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th."

Should Pence decide at the final hour not to appear (or when he steps of the podium during a session that may well stretch into Thursday morning) the gavel would be taken by the longest serving GOP senator, Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Something similar hasn't happened since 1969, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended a foreign dignitary's funeral overseas rather than announce that he'd lost to Richard Nixon.

In recent weeks, Trump has become keenly interested in the presiding officer's role but still does not understand it. Last month, he signaled his approval when GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas filed a quickly dismissed lawsuit designed to get Pence to overturn the election results. Aboard Air Force One on his way to Florida for Christmas, he retweeted a supporter's entreaty for Pence to refuse to accept the Electoral College results.

Pence — who went to the Capitol on Sunday to meet with Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough — has reportedly sought to explain the process to the president in hopes of diffusing the pressure on him, which clearly has not worked. Pence and Trump met in the Oval Office on Monday just before the president headed to Georgia.

From Your Site Articles
  • Republicans face a career-defining vote in two days - The Fulcrum ›
  • Why McConnell wants the GOP to accept the election results - The ... ›
  • The Electoral College process is like Chutes and Ladders - The ... ›
  • Reforming one law may stop another insurrection, experts say - The Fulcrum ›
  • What is the Electoral Count Act? - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • 1887 Electoral Count Act: Pence can't hand Trump election or block ... ›
  • Pence 'welcomes' congressional Republicans' bid to challenge ... ›
  • Mike Pence could 'go rogue' when Congress counts electoral votes ... ›
  • Trump Pressures Pence to Reject Electoral Votes - The New York ... ›
election 2020

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Our Staff
17h

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Rabbi Charles Savenor
17h

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
17h

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Lawrence Goldstone
02 February

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Katherine Kapustka
02 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February
Videos

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
17h

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February

Podcast: Collage: The promise of Black History Month

Our Staff
01 February

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
30 January
Recommended
Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take
Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Civic Ed
Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcasts
Video: The dignity index

Video: The dignity index

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Big Picture
Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Big Picture