Republican lawmakers paralyzed by Trump's false fraud claims

The lawmakers’ attempt to appease newly polarized camps of voters within the Republican Party “won’t fly” with voters on either side of that divide, said Gabriel Sterling, a top Georgia election official – and a Republican – who has been debunking what he called “nonsensical” election fraud claims since the Nov. 3 vote.

“They were trying to have their cake and eat it, too,” he said of the lawmakers.

That won’t work, Sterling said, because future voters will form their opinions on the lawmakers’ actions – their vote to overturn the election – rather than their words explaining their reasons. Both pro- and anti-Trump voters, he said, are going to see “147 people who agree with Trump that the election was stolen.”…

In interviews and public statements, some of the 147 lawmakers now say their objections had nothing to do with voter fraud. More than 80 of them have cited one particular constitutional argument. They contend that, in battleground states Trump lost, state courts and election officials violated the U.S. Constitution by making procedural changes such as expanding mail-in voting or extending vote-counting deadlines without a vote of their state legislature.