WASHINGTON – Eleven Republican senators and elected senators said on Saturday they would vote to reject President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory next week when Congress meets to formally certify it, challenging the results of a free and fair election to yield to President Trump’s futile attempts to remain in power with false allegations of electoral fraud.
While her move does not change the outcome, she guarantees that what would normally be a superficial session on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ratify the results of the presidential election will become a party fight, in which Republicans magnify specious allegations of widespread electoral fraud and improprieties that have been rejected by courts across the country.
It will also expose deep disagreements among Republicans at a critical juncture, forcing them to choose between accepting the results of a democratic election – even if it means irritating supporters who don’t like the outcome – and showing loyalty to Trump, who has demanded that they support his attempt to hold on to the presidency.
In a joint statement, Republicans – including seven senators and four who are due to take office on Sunday – called for a 10-day audit of election results in disputed states and said they would vote to reject voters in those states until a was completed.
The group is led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and also includes Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Mike Braun of Indiana and elected senators Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming, Roger Marshall from Kansas, Bill Hagerty from Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville from Alabama.
Together with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who announced this week that he would object to Congressional certification of election results, they raise to almost a quarter the proportion of Senate Republicans who have broken with their leaders to join the effort to invalidate the Biden’s victory. In the House, more than half of the Republicans have joined a failed process that seeks to overturn voters’ will, and it is hoped that it will further support the effort to challenge the results in Congress next week.
Although the senators’ statement called the January 6 vote “the only constitutional power left to consider and enforce the multiple allegations of serious electoral fraud”, there is no provision in the Constitution for such a review after the Electoral College has certificate or election.
In the statement, Republicans cited poll results showing that most members of their party believed the election was “rigged”, a statement that Trump made for months and was repeated in the right-wing media and by many Republican members of Congress.
“A fair and reliable audit – conducted quickly and completed well before January 20 – would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and significantly increase the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next president,” they wrote. “We are acting not to hinder the democratic process, but to protect it.”
They also noted that their effort was unlikely to succeed, as any challenge must be sustained both by the House, where Democrats hold the majority, and by the Senate, where major Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader , have tried to turn it off.
“We hope that the majority, if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, will vote otherwise,” wrote the senators.
The Congressional certification process is typically a procedural step, but as Trump continues to perpetuate the myth of widespread electoral fraud, Republicans in Congress are eager to challenge the results. That is the case, although the vast majority of them have just won the elections in the same vote that they now claim to have been administered fraudulently.
McConnell discouraged Senate lawmakers from joining the House effort, and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second Republican, told reporters that the challenge to the election results would fail in the Senate “like a dog’s shot”, warning a speech by Mr. Trump on Twitter.
Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, on Thursday condemned the attempt, rebuking it as a “dangerous ploy” designed to “deprive millions of Americans”.