[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 211 (Monday, December 14, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1137-E1138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




REFLECTIONS ON THE PROCESS ESTABLISHED BY THE FRAMERS FOR THE ELECTION 
        OF THE PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, December 14, 2020

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I rise to offer a few brief thoughts 
on the process established by the Framers for the election of the 
President and Vice-President of the United States and the certain 
outcome of that process that will be known later today and ratified on 
in a Joint Meeting of Congress on January 6, 2021.
  The impeached and electorally defeated incumbent has amassed a 98 
percent failure record (1/50) in his legal challenges to the 
certification of electors.
  Not to be outdone, the Texas Attorney General, joined by 17 
Republican Attorneys General and 126 sitting Republican Members of 
Congress, filed a shameful, desperate Hail Mary action requesting the 
U.S. Supreme Court to disenfranchise 10 million voters in Georgia, 
Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because they claim somehow by the

[[Page E1138]]

local decision made by those sovereign states to protect their citizens 
from a lethal pandemic by permitting voting by mail.
  The Supreme Court summarily rejected this latest lawsuit, finding 
that petitioners lacked standing to bring their specious arguments.
  Madam Speaker, it defies belief that persons claiming to revere the 
10th Amendment and federalism would have taken this action that makes a 
mockery of their core beliefs and is so inconsistent with the bedrock 
principle that in America, it is ``We, the People'' who choose our 
leaders; leaders do not choose their voters.
  The principle behind this most frivolous of lawsuits would allow the 
absurd result of California suing Texas for not expanding Medicaid, New 
York suing Mississippi for the way it runs its penal system, Illinois 
suing North Carolina for gerrymandering election districts, and 
Minnesota suing Alabama over its school funding mechanism.
  This latest Republican led and Trump-inspired law suit, like the 
preceding 50, was not grounded in reality so it is useful to describe 
what the Constitution and the law prescribe regarding the process for 
electing a president.
  First, it must be emphasized that while November 3 was Election Day 
throughout the nation, it was not a national election but a series of 
discreet and separate elections held in each state and District of 
Columbia to choose the persons who under the 12th Amendment are to meet 
six weeks later to cast the votes to elect the President and Vice-
President.
  The result of those elections was that Joe Biden was the leading 
vote-getter in more states with more people by larger margins than 
Donald Trump.
  In fact, the latest tally of all votes cast shows Joe Biden has 
received more votes, 81.2 million, than anyone in history, 
outdistancing his vanquished rival by an astounding 7 million votes.
  Second, the next important date in the electoral process is today, 
December 14, which is the first Monday after the second Wednesday and 
the date set by federal law, when the men and women chosen by the 
voters of their respective states gather in the several state capitals 
to cast their votes for President and Vice-President.
  While there are a number of events yet to take place that are 
required by the Constitution and our laws, it is beyond any reasonable 
dispute what the culmination of these events will yield: an 
announcement on January 6, 2021 at a Joint Meeting of the Congress in 
the House of Representatives, by the President of the Senate, Mike 
Pence, to the nation and the world that Joseph R. Biden is elected as 
the 46th President and that Kamala D. Harris is elected the 49th Vice-
President of the United States.
  While this meeting is popularly known as the Electoral College, it 
should be noted that this particular term is nowhere mentioned in the 
Constitution itself.
  Instead, the Electoral College should properly be understood as a 
process, not a place, for electing the President and the Vice-
President.
  In every state, this process begins with the nomination by the 
state's political parties of candidates for the position of 
presidential elector.
  Next, is the ascertainment of which slate of candidates were selected 
to be the electors, which in every state is determined by the outcome 
of the presidential election held on the first Tuesday after the first 
Monday in the preceding November.
  After the electors have been ascertained, they are provided a writ of 
election by the state governor directing them to assemble in the state 
capital at a time specified on the first Monday after the second 
Wednesday in December to cast their votes for separately President and 
Vice-President.
  Any judicial disputes regarding the appointment of electors that are 
decided in accordance with state laws in place before the election at 
least six days in advance of the meeting are conclusive are conclusive 
as to the validity of the appointment.
  Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia by law require 
electors to cast their votes for the candidate of the political party 
that nominated them and most of the rest require the elector to sign a 
pledge committing him or her to do so, but again, since electors are 
typically faithful members or workers of the political party that 
nominated them, such pledges merely state the obvious.
  As I speak, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have certified 
the results of the presidential election, and since this was done at 
least six days before the meeting of electors, under Section 5 of the 
Electoral College Act, 3 U.S.C. 1 et seq., it is conclusive on the 
issue of whether the electors in those states were ``lawfully 
certified.''
  The Certificates of Ascertainment appointing the electors transmitted 
to the National Archivist and the President of the Senate will document 
that enough candidates nominated by his party were elected to cast at 
minimum 306 electoral votes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to be 
elected President and Vice-President of the United States, which is 36 
more than the needed 270 vote majority.
  Put another way, Joe Biden is slated to receive the exact number of 
electoral votes that were deemed to constitute a landslide, blowout, 
historic triumph by the current President just four short years ago.
  Third and finally, after the electors meet in the various state 
capitals next Monday, they will transmit their Certificates of Vote to 
the National Archivist where they will remain until opened on January 
6, 2021 by Vice-President Pence and counted in public before a Joint 
Meeting of the Congress.
  When all the votes are tabulated, the Vice-President will then 
announce and make official what we all know right to be true: Joe Biden 
has been elected the 46th President of the United States and Kamala 
Harris has been elected the 49th Vice-President and President of the 
Senate.
  Two weeks later on January 20, at noon, on the steps of the West 
Front of the U.S. Capitol, Joe Biden will be inaugurated and will enter 
office after taking the oath in which he will solemnly affirm that he 
``will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, 
and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the 
Constitution of the United States.''
  This outcome is not in doubt and no amount of suspending disbelief 
will make it so.
  It is all over but the shouting--and the public counting of the 
electoral ballots in the Joint Meeting of the Congress on January 6, 
2021.
  The center holds and the system is working as the Framers envisioned 
it.
  We can all celebrate that.

                          ____________________