US election 2020: Republican Senator Lindsey Graham backs call for state legislatures to ‘invalidate’ results

In a desperate final ploy to get Donald Trump re-elected, a senior Republican has backed calls for crucial battleground states to “invalidate” results.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News.

A senior Republican Senator has backed calls for crucial battleground states to “invalidate” allegedly fraudulent election results in a last-ditch attempt to scuttle Joe Biden’s election.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night that “everything should be on the table” when asked about the controversial proposal, which has been floated by former White House officials in recent days.

Under the United States Constitution, state legislatures have the power to appoint electors to the electoral college. Republican legislators currently control Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.

“We also know that the Constitution allows state legislators, they’re the ones that would make decision – should these Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, if there’s corruption and they don’t abide by the law, they don’t allow observers in, as the law calls for, should they then invalidate this?” Hannity asked.

“I think everything should be on the table,” Mr Graham replied.

Darren Beattie, a former Duke University professor and White House official, appears to have been among the first to make the suggestion in an article for Revolver earlier this week headlined “The Steal Is On. What Republicans Must Do Next To Guarantee Victory”.

Mr Beattie pointed to Supreme Court precedent in the 2000 Bush v Gore ruling, which held that the state legislature’s “power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary – it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by state legislatures in several states for many years after the framing of our Constitution”.

"Everything should be on the table" -- Lindsey Graham won't rule out that Republican legislatures should invalidate the election results and (presumably) award their electoral votes to Trump pic.twitter.com/ykNdFCicZW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 6, 2020

That ruling came in the context of the Florida recount drama, when state Republicans were on the verge of doing just that.

“Legislatures retain this right precisely due to crises like this one,” Mr Beattie wrote.

“Republican lawmakers should feel no hesitation about defending the true majorities in their states from a thuggish effort to change the results.”

Writing in The American Mind, Hillsdale College lecturer and former White House national security adviser Michael Anton agreed that Republican officials in close states should “expose shenanigans and, if necessary, to refuse to seat Biden electors in the event of a fake count”.

At least one key state has already poured cold water on the suggestion.

Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman reiterated on Thursday that the Republican-controlled legislature would not move to appoint electors to override the popular vote, WHYY reported.

Mr Corman had already knocked back the idea in October, writing in an opinion piece for the Centre Daily Times, co-authored with Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, that the state’s lawmakers “have no role to play in deciding the presidential election”.

“To insinuate otherwise is to inappropriately set fear into the Pennsylvania electorate with an imaginary scenario not provided for anywhere in law — or in fact,” they wrote. “Pennsylvania law plainly says that the state’s electors are chosen only by the popular vote of the commonwealth’s voters.”

The pair noted that the election was “the most politically charged in our lifetime, so we understand that misrepresentations and attention-grabbing social media posts will be part of the rhetoric”, but said “we need to rise above that and not fall victim to outside influences that are trying to stir emotion”.

Speaking on Fox News, Mr Graham said there was “the process of observing an election that’s being violated”.

“Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake,” he said. “Why are they shutting people out? Because they don’t want people to see what they’re doing.”

The South Carolina Senator also promised to donate $US500,000 ($690,000) from his election war chest to Donald Trump’s legal fund.

It came as vote counting continued in key battleground states including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, with Mr Trump’s hopes of re-election fading as the former Vice President continued to gain ground in urban Democrat strongholds.

Mr Trump made his first public appearance since election night on Thursday evening, declaring that “if you count the legal votes, I easily win”.

“If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us,” he said. “If you count the votes that came in late, we’re looking into them very strongly. A lot of them ave come in late.”

The President, citing instances of Republican observers being barred from counting rooms, vowed to challenge the election up to the Supreme Court.

He claimed Democrats “could never win the election and that is why they did the mail-in ballots where there is tremendous corruption and fraud going on”.

“They want to find out how many votes they need and then they seem to be able to find them, they wait and wait, and then they find them,” he said.

[e-mail]