What Happens if the Audits Find Fraud?

Audits of ballots cast in the November 3 election are being conducted in multiple states with the potential for more in additional states beginning. Several of the audits have already uncovered significant irregularities.

Because of razor thin margins that exist in several states having the final results of the presidential election called into question is not out of the realm of possibility. At that point however, the U.S. political system would find itself in uncharted territory.

Any presidential administration would find it nearly impossible to function on the world stage, especially as national security matters are concerned, with a pall of illegitimacy hanging over it. It stands to reason some action would have to be taken. Many point out however, our Constitution prescribes little guidance for exactly what such action would look like.

“I think you have analyzed it pretty accurately,” attorney David Carroll told me during a phone conversation this week. “I think the big takeaway is uncharted territory.”

Mr. Carroll was part of an election integrity case that went before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year. The Court ruled in that case, which challenged the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court’s ability to modify election rules without the Legislature’s consent, that election issues were now moot because President Donald Trump had already left the White House.

“A lot of things have to happen. We’re hypothesizing that there are enough votes changed in enough key states that would have changed the results of the presidential election.”

But, Mr. Carroll pointed out, those of the presidential election under such a scenario would not be the only results called into question.

“The presidential election isn’t the only one at issue. Remember, you have lots of other elections, you have the two Senators in Georgia and you have a lot of local people,” he said, alluding to Democratic Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock who both won runoff elections against incumbent Republicans and shifted control of that chamber to the Democrats.

“The local elections are not under the federal constitution so state law is going to govern and different states could view it very differently.”

Georgia State Senator Burt Jones (R) has declared publicly that if allegations in that state of counterfeit ballots being discovered are confirmed, he will ask Governor Brian Kemp (R) to call the State Legislature into a special session with the goal of decertifying elections.

Such action would have immediate implications for state and local races but could also impact the presidential election if Georgia, or any state, decided to rescind the electors it sent to the Electoral College and appoint new ones instead.

Under the Constitution, state legislatures have the authority to appoint electors to the Electoral College but it is then up to the U.S. Congress to vote to accept or certify those votes. Something Carroll says is possible but remains unlikely, at least with the present makeup of Congress.

“If there was a Republican Congress I could say maybe, but I don’t see a Democratic Congress doing that,” he said.