WASHINGTON – More than 100 Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives and a dozen senators say they will join an almost certainly futile effort on Wednesday to try to block certification from the Electoral College vote, showing Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the November elections.
Certification of the Electoral College’s vote 306-232 in favor of Biden is the last step before he is elected 46th president of the country on January 20.
Both chambers of Congress would need to defend the challenges to Biden’s victory for the election result to be overturned. Democrats strictly control the House and will certainly certify Biden’s victory, while the Democratic minority in the Senate, along with some Republicans who acknowledged Biden’s victory, will likely do the same in the Senate.
Trump, who for weeks made baseless claims that he was defrauded in the election for a second four-year term, continues to applaud the protests over his defeat, a result that will make him the fifth president of the United States in 245 years of the country’s history. lose candidacy for re-election after a single term.
His statements included several tweets, including more on Sunday, which prompted Twitter to flag the tweets with the warning: “This statement about electoral fraud is contested.”
“The Swing States didn’t even come close to following the dictates of their state legislatures,” posted the president on Sunday. “The“ electoral laws ”of these states were drafted by local judges and politicians, not by their legislatures, and are, therefore, even before reaching irregularities and fraud, UNCONSTITUTIONAL!”
Trump also called on his supporters to Mass in Washington on Wednesday to protest against Biden’s certification of victory.
Trump lost dozens of legal challenges to the election result, including twice in the Supreme Court. Ultimately, a federal appeals court on Saturday night upheld a first instance judge’s rejection of a case seeking to give Vice President Mike Pence the power to reject Biden’s winning election candidates in several states and, in instead, choose Trump’s voter lists to annul the election.
Pence is due to chair on Wednesday what is usually a ceremonial role in a joint session of Congress on tabulation of electoral votes that have already been certified by officials from the country’s 50 states and the national capital, Washington.
Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said in a statement on Saturday that the vice president “shares the concerns of millions of Americans about fraud and electoral irregularities in the last election.”
The vice president, the statement continued, “welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use their authority under the law to raise objections and present evidence before Congress and the American people on January 6. “.
But ultimately, Pence, as vice president and president of the Senate, will be tasked with announcing his own defeat as soon as the electoral vote is counted and the Republican challenges heard and presumably rejected.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri announced last week that he would challenge Biden’s victory, along with the House protest of dozens of lawmakers led by Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama. Hawley’s protest, specifically challenging Biden’s victory in eastern Pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes, was followed on Saturday by 11 other Republican senators led by Ted Cruz of Texas.
The 11 asked for a 10-day audit of election results in “disputed states”, saying they would vote to reject voters in those states until the audit was completed.
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, did not join the protest against voting in his state, saying that “a fundamental and defining characteristic of a democratic republic is the people’s right to elect their own leaders. The effort by Senators Hawley, Cruz and others to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in undecided states like Pennsylvania directly undermines that right. ”
Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said in a statement late Sunday that while he shares concerns about electoral irregularities and supports a commission to study the November vote, he will not object to Wednesday’s election count.
Cotton listed several reasons for his position, including saying that if Congress revoked the results of the Electoral College, it would take away the power to elect presidents of the people and place it in the hands of any party that controls Congress.
One of Trump’s advocates, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program on Sunday that he joined the protest against the Electoral College outcome because “We have tens of millions of people who think this election was stolen.”
But another Trump supporter, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said that proposing a commission two weeks before his inauguration “is not an effective fight for President Trump. It appears to be more of a political escape than an effective remedy. ”
The Senate’s top Republican legislator, majority leader Mitch McConnell, after weeks of refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory, congratulated Biden and elected vice president Kamala Harris as election winners after the Electoral College votes were cast in the middle from December. McConnell was unsuccessful in urging Republican lawmakers to give up on contesting the outcome.
Trump also tweeted on Sunday morning about the result in southern Georgia, where he lost to Biden by just under 12,000 votes out of 5 million votes.
“I spoke with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and election fraud in Georgia,” said Trump. “He did not want or was unable to answer questions such as the ‘ballot under the table’ coup, destruction of ballots, out-of-state ‘voters’, dead voters and more. He has no idea! ”
I spoke with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and election fraud in Georgia. He did not want or could not answer questions such as the “ballot under the table” scam, destruction of ballots, out-of-state “voters”, dead voters and more. He has no idea!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021
Raffensperger, a Republican, replied: “Respectfully, President Trump: what you are saying is not true. The truth will come out. ”
The vote in Georgia was initially counted, and then recounted twice, with Biden winning three times, the first time that a Democratic presidential candidate has conquered the state since 1992.