In less than 15 months, Congress will count and certify the votes from the electoral college. It is truly frightening that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., from the far right of the Republican Party, might have a prominent role in the process.
If Republicans keep control of the House in the November 2024 elections, it seems likely they will keep Johnson as speaker given their bitter divisions and difficulty in selecting someone for the position after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. Johnson was the primary proponent in the House of a way to overturn the 2020 election and keep Donald Trump in the presidency. He can be expected to do the same in 2024 if Trump is the Republican nominee and loses to President Joe Biden.
Erwin Chemerinsky is a contributing writer to Opinion and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. His latest book is “Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.”
Johnson, a lawyer, led the House Republicans in promoting a baseless legal theory that state legislatures have sole power to select and appoint electors. This so-called “independent state legislature” theory maintains that a state legislature can allocate its electors however it wants, regardless of the popular vote and a law that requires that electors go to the presidential candidate who won the popular vote. The hope was that Republican-controlled legislatures in states won by Biden would allocate their electors to Trump and give him the presidency. This theory was ...
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