Would you have certified the 2020 election results?
It’s a simple question that moderators can ask at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance.
Indeed, it shouldn’t be a matter of debate.
But here we are, thanks to Vance’s comments seeking to cast doubt on former Vice President Mike Pence’s certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.
Q: Would you have certified the 2020 election?
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 10, 2024
Vance: I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors pic.twitter.com/dTDbUTEj3X
Following the failed Trump-backed effort to subvert the 2020 election, Congress strengthened federal law to make a future coup attempt less likely to succeed. And the current vice president is Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who, like her GOP predecessor, acknowledges the VP’s ceremonial role in the certification process.
Follow live updates covering the 2024 vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz.
But while the potential for legal mischief in this election has thankfully lessened (though it’s ever present), it would still be worth asking Vance and Walz whether they would’ve done their straightforward duty like Pence, who understandably is not endorsing his former boss, who basically left him for dead on Jan. 6, 2021. It could help clarify not only their positions on this specific important issue but also how the VP hopefuls view the rule of law more broadly.
On that note, Vance’s comments about election certification — fueled by debunked voter fraud claims — aren’t the only area in which he has shown a willingness to cast the law aside in pursuit of Republican partisan interests. For example, he has pushed for Trump to “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state” and “replace them with our people. And when the courts — ’cause you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
Putting aside the dubious sourcing of the quote popularly attributed to then-President Jackson as he defied an 1832 Supreme Court ruling favoring Native American authority, Vance’s stance aligns with a Trumpian view of the law. That is, a view that calls for strict enforcement of the law when applied to others but optional compliance when that same law is turned toward Trump and his supporters.
To the extent that Vance would seek to defend his comments by arguing that the executive branch wouldn’t have to abide by illegitimate court rulings, one could raise the same objection to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting broad criminal immunity to Trump. So another debate question for the candidates could be: Does an administration have to abide by the immunity ruling if it runs afoul of that administration’s legal view?
Presumably, both Vance and Walz would say yes. For Vance, saying otherwise would theoretically leave Trump open to fuller prosecution. As for Walz, who will take the stage as a standard-bearer for his party, the mainstream Democratic Party response to the immunity ruling has been to press for a constitutional amendment to overturn it (i.e., going through a legal process to achieve a different result). At any rate, the candidates’ answers to that question, too, could help to educate any viewers who need more information about where the parties stand.
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