Re. Kelly Townsend contends the U.S. Constitution still gives the Arizona Legislature the power to “exercise its best judgment as to which state of electors the voters prefer.”/The Washington Post
By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services
A Trump supporter in the state legislature has crafted legislation designed to give the president the state’s 11 electoral votes even as some GOP lawmakers in Washington work to keep Congress from certifying the election Wednesday for Joe Biden.
SCR 1002, introduced by Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, is based on getting a majority of lawmakers from both the state House and Senate to approve a resolution — and quickly — saying that the general election “was marred by irregularities so significant as to render it highly doubtful whether the certified results accurately represent the will of the voters.”
Townsend acknowledges that the 11 Democrat electors already cast their votes for Joe Biden on Dec. 14, the date required under federal law. And that, she said, makes it impossible to re-run the election.
But she contends that the U.S. Constitution still gives the Arizona Legislature the power to “exercise its best judgment as to which state of electors the voters prefer.” And that, Townsend said, are the 11 would-be electors who were pledged to Trump and would have voted for him on Dec. 14 if the official — and, she contends, tainted — results had been different.
