UNTHINKABLE! "As a constitutional law professor, [Rep. Jamie] Raskin understood the 'mathematical-political tricks' embedded in the Electoral College, and he shared with Speaker Nancy Pelosi concern about [Donald] Trump's potential Electoral College 'gambits.'".

• Author: Fischer, Carolyn
• Position: POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

SINCE 2017, Jamin B. ("Jamie") Raskin has represented Maryland's Eighth Congressional District in the House of Representatives. Previously, Rep. Raskin, a Democrat, had served three terms as a state senator and senate Majority Whip in Maryland. A graduate of Harvard Law School, where he edited the Harvard Law Review, Raskin taught constitutional law at American University's College of Law for more than 25 years. He has authored three books: Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. The American People; We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and about Students; and, most recently, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy.

As he explains in Unthinkable, long before the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, Raskin's "radical faith" in democracy had withstood four years of Pres. Donald Trump's "political propaganda, social media disinformation, racist violence, and authoritarian demagoguery."

As a constitutional law professor, Raskin understood the "mathematical-political tricks" embedded in the Electoral College, and he shared with Speaker Nancy Pelosi concern about Trump's potential Electoral College "gambits." Raskin believed Joe Biden would win a large majority of the popular vote. However, he feared Biden's converted popular votes might not survive Trump's "tactical mischief in the internal maze of this archaic institution."

By midsummer of 2020, Trump had indicated that if he failed to win, the presidential election would not be over on Nov. 3. He made it clear he did not "trust the ballots"; there would be "no transfer of power, [only] a continuation" of his tenure. Democrats anticipated an Electoral College fight and implementation of the Electoral Count Act of 1887. If Trump could preclude Biden's getting 270 votes in the Electoral College, the vote would go to the House for a "contingent election" in which each state delegation would have one vote. In this scenario, Trump probably would have won.

Biden had 306 votes in the Electoral College. In order to discredit 37 of these votes, Trump had three options: coerce state election officials to overturn the popular vote count due to "imagined" fraud or corruption; convince GOP states to cancel votes as above, then use plenary power to appoint "favorable" electors; and, as a last resort, ask Vice Pres. Mike Pence to "unilaterally reject electors in swing states," thereby triggering a contingent election in the House.

Although Trump's own Department of Homeland Security had termed the 2020 balloting the " 'most secure' election in American history," Pelosi appointed a team from the Judiciary Committee to have ready on Jan. 6 anticipatory refutation for "GOP objections to electoral votes cast in certain swing states where Biden had won." Raskin and four of his Judiciary Committee lawyer-political friends--Joe Neguse, David Cicilline, Ted Lieu, and Eric Swalwell--became the "core" of the team examining "everything related to Jan. 6 and beyond."

Trump's first option produced 61 court cases, all of which found there was no fraud or corruption of significance to "overturn election results anywhere." Judicial decisions established a "perfect factual and legal record of the falsity of Trump's Big Lie." In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania--states he lost--he called "at least 31 Republican" local and state officials, whom he begged to exercise their power to...