There is a lot of talk going around that Vice President Mike Pence has the ability to right this election on January 6, 2021 and save the election from being stolen.

That is the day that the electoral counts will be official and Joe Biden will officially be the president-elect.

What they’re saying is that Vice President Pence can pull a Thomas Jefferson and count the electoral votes in favor of President Trump and thereby secure a second term for him.

The 1800 Presidential election was a contest between Jefferson, Aaron Burr, John Adams, Charles Pinckney, and John Jay. Jefferson, as the current Vice President, was the President of the Senate when it came time to count the votes. And he counted them in his own favor! Bruce Ackerman and David Fontana explain what happened in their article “Thomas Jefferson Counts Himself into the Presidency” (90 Virginia Law Review 2004, 551-643):

Thomas Jefferson was remarkably aggressive as President of the Senate. Georgia’s certificate – granting four electoral votes to Jefferson – was constitutionally defective on its face, a deficiency that was announced on the floor of Congress and reported by leading newspapers of the day. To resolve all doubts, we have located Georgia’s certificate in the National Archives, and it does indeed reveal striking constitutional irregularities…

Nevertheless, Jefferson failed to pause before counting George’s four electoral votes into the Republican column, declaring the final vote as if nothing were amiss. Had Georgia’s ballot been excluded, the vote count…would have admitted all five candidates into a runoff in the House… Without the decisive use of his power as President of the Senate, Jefferson might never have become President of the United States.

Now, the Vice President is even being sued by Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert because there is disagreement about how the Electoral College vote is to be accepted.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, who claims Pence has the power to hand President Donald Trump a second term by rejecting Democratic electors from swing states, described the failed talks in a Tuesday filing in federal court in Tyler, Texas. Gohmert is seeking a court order requiring the Office of the Counsel for the Vice President and the U.S. Justice Department to respond to the lawsuit by Wednesday evening.

This is really going to be a mess, but it’s been a mess since the election anyway.