[Editor’s Note: This essay is a follow-up to David Robb’s essay from yesterday, “The Maricopa County Arizona Audit Is Complete: What Did We Learn?”]
Truth and Consequences
There are much broader considerations resulting from the Arizona audit than those listed yesterday’s piece. Besides confirming to the American public that there were serious improprieties in the 2020 election, sufficient to validate concerns of not only who should be President, but also what is the legitimate makeup of the House and Senate, the audit has demonstrated to the world at large that there is a crisis in American governance.
As I discussed in a previous article, the options for correcting a fraudulent election are limited. We have impeachment, court action, decertification, and the 10th Amendment. A default option would be to leave things as they are, knowing that the election results are in serious question, but realizing that the consequences of making things right may be worse than living with an illegitimate administration.
A Win by Default
While I do not recommend the default position, I can understand why some might prefer that option. Among those are the ones responsible for the fraud in the first place. One of the consequences of the audit is that of exposure. There is now extreme pressure on those responsible to take action to protect themselves and the results they obtained through their fraud. These actions include destruction of evidence, diverting or outright stopping of other audits, emplacing rules, regulations, laws and other barriers to preclude effective corrective measures, initiating irreversible actions, such as massive spending, destruction of small businesses, forced bankruptcy of landlords, initiation or participation in a new war, allowing territorial acquisition by our enemies that would have major negative strategic effects for us, promoting unrestricted immigration/invasion to alter our values and subvert our laws, and other actions that cannot be remedied in any reasonable way, and taking such other actions as might serve to consolidate their power. They have every incentive to act quickly.
We likewise have every incentive to remedy matters quickly. The audit has simply exacerbated an already critical situation. Unfortunately, many of the remedies are slow and cumbersome. Some do not fully rectify the situation and leave critical elements intact, much like only removing part of a cancer.
There are many, including many thoughtful people I respect, who think we should just accept the 2020 results and move on. They argue that in trying to correct an error in 2020 we are living in the past and we just need to do better in the future. The problem I see with that approach is that it sets a bad precedent that forever clouds any future impropriety and excuses a violation of our values as a country. Imagine a murder case where the murderer was acquitted because the victim could not appear in court to give testimony. Would there ever be a successful murder conviction from that point on? Call it the Hillary defense – “What difference does it make now?”.
FJB
Some advocate impeachment of Joe Biden on a variety of grounds. A 25th Amendment removal is a variation on this approach. Unfortunately, we have too many members in both the House and the Senate who have a vested interest in things as they are for impeachment to be a realistic remedy.
Impeachment would also leave intact all the Executive Orders, legislation, regulatory actions, appointments and other mechanisms that are causing so much damage to the country. It is clear that the brain of the current administration does not reside in the head, so its removal would have little effect on the operations of the remainder of the organism.
Courting Disaster
Others believe the proper course is to have the Supreme Court rule. Mike Lindell favors this approach and believes that he has sufficient evidence of massive fraud to present that the court would have to rule to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
While such a ruling could happen quickly, and while it would have a certain legitimacy, it could also add fuel to an already incendiary situation leading to massive riots and civil disruption regardless of the ruling. Imagine the George Floyd reactions multiplied ten or a hundred-fold. Aside from that concern, there is a real question of if the Court would even take up the case.
One might say that the current predicament is a direct result of the failure to take up the Texas case, a case supported by over twenty other states, where it was argued that failure of other states to abide by their own election laws had an adverse effect on the outcome of an election that would affect Texas. Most would agree that such a question is clearly in the purview of the Court, yet the Court declined it. There is reason to believe that they would decline any new election case as well, perhaps arguing that the plaintiffs had no standing, or that the case was moot – an already done deal.
Decertification Chaos
Still others argue for decertification of enough electoral college votes to take the total below the threshold for a valid election result. This approach would have the virtue of fairly quick process but could leave the country in a deeper crisis than even an illegitimate administration. The question would be who would assume power, and by what mechanism. Simply declaring the current administration to be illegitimate would leave a leadership void that many would see as an opportunity to be exploited.
China, for example, might see it as an opportunity to annex Taiwan while there was no U.S. Commander-in-Chief to direct opposition to such an act. Many others throughout the world would likewise see a chance to act while the U.S. was distracted with its internal affairs. There are also many internal opportunists who might seek power. Any decertification process would have to include a remedy to take effect immediately when the current administration was declared illegitimate. That might be a new election, a declaration of a new administration based on some criterion such as winner of the remaining certified votes even if they did not reach threshold or some other mechanism that did not leave the country leaderless for any period more than an hour, if that long.
The best case would be if those states decertifying their votes for the current administration were to recertify them for an alternate candidate, perhaps based on the outcome of their own audits and corrected counts. In any case, decertification is a risky business, not just for the U.S., but also for most of the world that has come to depend on our stability and example as much as on our military and economic power.
Taking the 10th
Lastly, we come to the 10th Amendment which our founders included as a way to deal with unforeseen circumstances. With appropriate backing, a 10th Amendment referendum could be organized and implemented in a short period of time, perhaps two months or less. It would have the virtue of support of the majority of the electorate and would not be subject to most of the problems of the alternative approaches. Taking the form of a recall, it need only have one question:
Should the current administration be declared illegitimate, holding office only by virtue of an improper election? Yes or no.
If the answer were yes, then the opposing party would assume power immediately on verification of the referendum results.
There is another solution that I did not list, but that some are seriously considering. That is simply to break up the Union. New Hampshire has already proposed secession. I do not advocate this avenue. We tried that approach a hundred and fifty years ago and we are still suffering the consequences from that failure.
The country is in the midst of an existential crisis whether we want to be or not. The Arizona audit didn’t cause the crisis, it just made it more obvious and raised the stakes. The question really is, do we want to be a nation with rule of law and a Constitution that we hold inviolable, or do we want to succumb to the temptations of sloth as we follow the easy path into corruption and cronyism, and ultimately destruction of the Great Experiment in self-government that was a shining example for so many peoples and years.
Which shall we choose?
By David Robb, Blue State Conservative
David Robb is regular contributor to The Blue State Conservative and a practicing scientist who has been working in industry for over 50 years. One of his specialties is asking awkward questions. A large part of his work over the years has involved making complex scientific issues clear and understandable to non-specialists. Sometimes he even succeeds.
