Political strategist explains how a corrupt Republican House majority could steal 2024’s election for Trump

If the 2022 midterms see a major red wave like the red waves of 1994 and 2010, Democrats will lose their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. But this time, the House will be taken over by MAGA Republicans who are even more extreme and far to the right than the Contract With America Republicans of the Bill Clinton years or the Tea Party Republicans of the Barack Obama era. And these MAGA Republicans, political strategist Scott Anderson warns in an op-ed published by Politico on March 31, would gladly steal the 2024 presidential election for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee.

“At present, a House majority is perhaps the one thing Trump’s supporters seem most likely to run during the 2024 presidential election,” explains Anderson, who serves as executive director of the Strategic Victory Fund. “But that alone might be enough to steal the presidency, unless and until Congress says otherwise. Under current law, a simple majority in the House of Representatives could not only derail the process for counting electoral votes, but would also appoint the person who becomes president if and when that process fails. If Congress wants to prevent this from happening, it needs to look past the Electoral Count Act to another area of law that reformers have yet to address: that governing presidential succession.”

Anderson adds, “This disturbing scenario has its origins in the process that the Constitution sets out for determining who becomes president following a general election.”

The Electoral Count Act of 1887, Anderson notes, “regulates the process through which Congress counts the electoral votes after each presidential election” but “has a host of ambiguities, many of which were seized on by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to try to keep him in office despite his defeat.” Anderson applauds the fact that “a bipartisan group of lawmakers” is “focused thus far on fixing the Electoral Count Act,” but the political strategist stresses that more will need to be done to safeguard against the possibility of MAGA Republicans stealing 2024’s presidential election if Trump is the GOP nominee and loses.

Following a presidential election, Anderson explains, a joint session of Congress on January 6 is where the electoral vote count “is finalized” and “the vice president reads the results to those assembled and thereby establishes who has qualified to become the official president-elect and vice president-elect.”

“This joint session is where Trump supporters hoped to turn the 2020 election results in his favor, specifically by having legislators object to some states’ electoral votes and urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to abuse his authority to change the final count,” Anderson notes. “When Pence refused, pro-Trump protesters were enraged and soon began storming the U.S. Capitol building to disrupt the proceedings. This is why reformers in Congress are now focused on overhauling the Electoral Count Act, which regulates the procedures at this joint session: so as to make it harder, if not impossible, for others to manipulate the joint session in this way in the future. But none of the proposals currently on the table address the more fundamental question of what happens if the joint session never takes place.”

Anderson recommends “revising the Presidential Succession Act,” which he says is “well within Congress’ reach and warrants the attention of reformers.”

“If the experience of the 2020 election has shown us anything, it’s that the rules and traditions that have long governed our country are more fragile than they may seem,” Anderson warns. “Congress needs to take the threat to our democratic system seriously. Doing so requires that they not just fix yesterday’s problems, but look ahead and address other vulnerabilities before they can be capitalized upon.”