The laws are rather byzantine in this matter. This stems comes from days of the founding fathers who did not want political parties. The original intention was that the state legislature would elect, from amongst themselves, the electors to go to Washington DC. The electors would convene for a week or two, somehow finding a president and vice-president. The electors may have had a preference when the convention started, but they were free to change their vote later.
Somehow the electors became hacks from the political parties, elected by the people, not the legislatures. The ballots for presidential candidates may have the names of the presidential candidate. But legally speaking, the American voter is voting for an unknown person who was elected in some obscure internal party election. THIS IS A VERY CONVOLUTED PROCESS that supposedly satisfies the intent of the founding fathers while giving political control.
This convoluted process requires a special session of Congress that has become a legal formality for many elections. But it is also a trap door that someone like Donald Trump can use. If this special session does not happen, then Joe Biden was, constitutionally speaking, not the next president of the United States.
The January 6 protesters did not take the protest to a high enough level to allow Mr. Trump to declare martial law. The meeting would have been suspended until martial law was lifted, which the USA might be under today. The military and police forces swear allegiance to the constitution--and if the special meeting was not held, they have to obey Mr. Trump.
Another angle is why did the Republican legislators return to the Capital to finish the meeting? Without quorum, the meeting is null. Mr. Trump is still the president until that meeting is called.
Anyways, the whole process is byzantine. Probably impossible to fix.
Anyways (again), I'm on Medium to promote my alternative democracy. Here is the link to my website:
http://www.tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/crfp-chapter.php
BTW, I brought up the same EC points in this article:
I seem to be the only one on Medium to see these angles.
