New York Times columnist David French published a truly alarming op-ed yesterday, pointing out a strategy that Republicans are apparently considering as we approach this November’s election. In Article I, Section 5, the Constitution says that both the House and Senate will decide who they’ll seat as members: “Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.” In other words, if the House — which right now is in Republican hands — determines that they want a Republican who lost an election for the House or Senate to a Democrat this fall to be the person seated as a member of Congress rather than the duly elected Democrat, they can make that happen with a simple majority vote. They can literally overrule or simply ignore the results of any election for any House or Senate seat if they don’t like it. Of course, to give the process a patina of legitimacy they’d probably point back to some squealing Laura Loomer-type back home in the state to claim that there were “irregularities,” but they can do it and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. In fact, it’s been done over a dozen times in this country’s history, and the Supreme Court itself has, as French points out, in a 1972 case called Roudebush v. Hartke, ruled that, “Which candidate is entitled to be seated in the Senate is, to be sure, a nonjusticiable political question.” In other words, No court can rule on this; there is no possible appeal. They’d probably only try to pull this off it the election is close and control of either body is hanging in the balance; that’s the circumstance that’s provoked such an action in the distant past. This is one more solid reason — in addition to overcoming the GOP voter suppression efforts I wrote about yesterday — why the ultimate and arguably only solution we face this fall to preserve our democracy is to show up in such overwhelming numbers that nobody can deny the results.
