The House of Representatives is asking a court to reject a petition from Republicans that requests judges to say Vice President Mike Pence has the authority to reject some electoral votes.
The Democrat-controlled House in its new filing says the vice president during counting sessions, per the 1877 Act, “opens the electors’ certificates, but does not count the votes.”
The court should reject the claim because the plaintiffs lack standing, the suit is not timely, and the constitutional challenges “have no merit.”
“And the public interest and equities cut strongly against a first-of-its-kind injunction that would rewrite longstanding procedural rules for Congressional vote counting and create confusion just days before the required Joint Session,” it added.
In a statement accompanying the brief, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said: “The Gohmert lawsuit has zero legal merit and is yet another sabotage of our democracy. There is no doubt that, despite this desperate unpatriotic charade, on January 6, [Democrat presidential candidate] Joe Biden will be confirmed by the acceptance of the vote of the Electoral College as the 46th President of the United States.”
“A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,” an attorney representing Pence argued in a separate filing.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced Tuesday that he will challenge electoral votes during the congressional session. A quickly-rising number of representatives are also planning to file objections.
Theoretically, objections could lead to the nullification of some state’s electoral votes, but the likelihood of challenges being upheld is considered unlikely because that would require a majority vote in each chamber. Democrats control the House and GOP Senate leadership has repeatedly criticized plans to file the objections.
In the case neither candidate reaches 270 electoral votes during the session, a secondary system would be triggered, wherein the House decides the next president by voting by state. In that scenario, Republicans hold a slight edge.