Meet Mike Johnson, Republicans’ new House speaker.

Republicans have at long last elected a House speaker: Representative Mike Johnson, a fundamentalist Christian who was also once called a key “architect” in Congress’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.

Johnson finally secured the speaker’s gavel after Republican infighting left the House without a speaker for 22 days. He secured 220 votes.

Johnson is a four-term congressman representing Louisiana. His win also represents the rise of the MAGA front in the Republican Party. Earlier Wednesday morning, Donald Trump endorsed Johnson as House speaker—after quickly killing Mike Emmer’s nomination the day before.

  • LetMeEatCake@lemm.ee
    10·
    1 year ago

    Election law varies from state to state. But generally from what I gather, a write-in candidate is only valid if the candidate registers with the state in advance.

    If there’s a winning plurality for Mickey Mouse in your state for a statewide office, it won’t matter. The state won’t be forced to see if there’s anyone there that has the name Mickey Mouse and then pick which (if more than one) was the individual meant by the voters. Someone has to register with the state saying that they’re going to run a write-in campaign for office with name XYZ.

    Note that these details are a bit of a side track. The above person was talking about Trump being excluded due to the 14th amendment. However that doesn’t say “not on the ballot” — it invalidates people from office entirely. If applied to Trump, the not being on the ballot would be a consequence of being determined ineligible for office, not a method to make him unable to win. Also it’s all moot: while I think on the face of it the correct action would be to apply the 14th amendment to Trump, the fact of the matter is that this will not happen. States are not going to be willing to risk the political backlash from going down that path, so they will not.

    • PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      52·
      1 year ago

      States are not going to be willing to risk the political backlash from going down that path, so they will not.

      Many states already are going down that path. Are you saying the judges won’t vote in the people’s favor bringing the suit?

    • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldEnglish
      28·
      1 year ago

      Colorado already did and it has stated it’s Consitutional and allows a 2/3 vote in the U.S. Congress to overturn. We won’t back down from that, the law is the law.

      • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
        21·
        1 year ago

        I AM a lawyer, and from what I can see, you’re close but (perhaps unintentionally) misrepresenting the facts, unless you are referring to some other previous action. A judge this week decided to allow a case to proceed that will determine, amongst other things, whether the events of January 6 “constituted an insurrection” and whether Trump “engaged” in insurrection.

        • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          1 year ago

          I’m referring to what our State Legislators are saying that they will ignore the Supreme Court if they don’t follow the Consitution in favor or partisan politics. The law is the law and the Supreme Court cannot rewrite what the Consitution says.