A year and a half after Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, Donald Trump is still pushing for decertifying Biden’s win, particularly in Wisconsin. One of the loudest advocates in the battleground state, a Republican state lawmaker who is running for governor, wants the Legislature to rescind Biden’s 10 Electoral College votes from Wisconsin. The resolution on decertification that he hopes to submit in August claims, despite the evidence, that there was widespread fraud in the election. He said he is not seeking to undo victories by anyone else in 2020, including his own race. Legal experts, including Republican attorneys, say there is no legal means to decertify the past election and no evidence to support such action. Nevertheless, decertification continues to be a rallying cry among many Republicans in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Here’s a look at what’s happening. ___ IS DECERTIFICATION POSSIBLE? Trump continues to make baseless claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, even though dozens of lawsuits have failed and multiple reviews, recounts and audits have upheld Biden’s win. Trump’s latest effort to reverse his loss is focused on Wisconsin, where Biden beat him by about 21,000 votes. The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling this month, said absentee ballot drop boxes are illegal. Those are secure containers that absentee voters can use, usually set up at such locations as government buildings. An Associated Press survey of state election officials nationwide showed that an expanded use of drop boxes due to the coronavirus pandemic did not lead to any widespread problems, including in Wisconsin. Trump and his supporters argue the recent state Supreme Court ruling means ballots cast in drop boxes in Wisconsin in 2020 were invalid. “When the ballot drop boxes were used illegally, anything and all things that went into them made them null and void the moment they went into the box,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Tim Ramthun, a candidate for governor, when arguing for his resolution to decertify the election. Not true, said law professor Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA Law School. The court ruling does not apply retroactively, and even if it somehow did, there is no mechanism in the Constitution for decertifying an election after Electoral College ballots have been certified, he said. “The whole theory is ludicrous,” Hasen said. “Even accepting the idea that the use of most drop boxes was illegal in 2020, that would do nothing to call into question the validity of the votes that were cast through drop boxes. There’s been no indication whatsoever that drop boxes were used to facilitate any amount of fraud.” Edward B. Foley, a law professor who heads The Ohio State University’s election law center, said the claims don’t seem serious from a legal perspective. “The presidential election is the one where it’s most clear that decertification is impossible,” Foley said. “Once a president is inaugurated, impeachment is the only way to remove the incumbent president from office.” ___ WHAT DOES TRUMP SAY? Trump has argued that it would have been impossible for other Republicans to win in 2020 and for him to lose. “People that thought they were going to lose races, they won races — Republicans,” Trump told The Associated Press in a telephone interview last December. “And they say the only reason […]

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