Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican elected senators or senators said on Saturday that they will reject presidential voters from states where the results are contested by the Donald Trump campaign, “unless and until [an] the 10-day emergency audit is complete ”.
The change is largely symbolic, but it nevertheless contributes to a growing sense of schism and crisis that affects America’s democracy.
Trump refused to admit defeat to Joe Biden, although the Democrat won over 7 million votes nationally and won the electoral college 306-232 – a margin that Trump said was overwhelming when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Trump campaign lost the vast majority of the more than 50 lawsuits it mounted in battle states, alleging massive electoral fraud, and before the United States Supreme Court.
On Friday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a House Republican who was trying to give the vice president, Mike Pence, who will preside over the certification of the electoral college’s outcome on Wednesday, January 6, the power to overturn the verdict.
However, the Republican senators and elected senators who issued the statement on Saturday followed Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in a commitment to challenge the polling station’s outcome.
Objections are also expected of most House Republicans. These objections must be debated and voted on, but as Democrats control the House and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other leading Republicans have voiced opposition, the attempt to deprive the majority of Americans seems doomed to fail.
Cruz and Johnson joined in issuing a statement on Saturday by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike Braun (Indiana).
Elected senators Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) and Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) also signed.
“The 2020 election,” they said, “as well as the 2016 election, was hotly contested and, in many undecided states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of electoral fraud, violations and loose application of the electoral law and other voting irregularities. “
No concrete evidence for such claims has been presented. Federal officials, including former Attorney General William Barr and Christopher Krebs, a cybersecurity chief later dismissed by Trump, said the election was safe.
Regardless, senators said that Congress “should immediately appoint an electoral commission, with full investigative and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of election results in disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if necessary. “
The senators referred to the most direct precedent for their claim, the contested 1876 election, which culminated in the appointment of such a commission.
“We must follow that precedent,” said the Republicans.
Many well-informed voices would suggest that it would be a bad idea, as the process led to a political settlement that ended the Reconstruction process and led to the establishment of racist laws by Jim Crow across the former southern slaver
In August, Pulitzer-winning historian Eric Foner told the Guardian: “The 1876 election would not have been challenged had there not been massive violence in the south to prevent blacks from voting and suppressing voters as we have today. Now voter suppression is mostly legal. “
Presciently, given the claims by Trump and his supporters that the postal vote used in a pandemic was widely abused by Democrats, he added: “Today, I can certainly see Trump’s people contesting these ballots by mail: ‘They are all fraudulent. , they should not be counted. ‘Challenging people’s vote. “
Cruz, like Hawley, is prominent among Republicans who are expected to run for president in 2024 and are therefore eager to appeal to a party base that is still solidly loyal to Trump.
Perhaps unwittingly pointing to widespread concern about the damage caused by Trump’s position and the Republican Party’s support for it, elected senators and senators said their “claims are not believed by just one individual candidate.
“Instead, they are widespread. The Reuters / Ipsos polls, tragically, show that 39% of Americans believe that ‘the election was rigged’. This belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%) and independents (31%).
“Some members of Congress disagree with this assessment, as do many members of the media. But, believe it or not, our elected officials or journalists, this deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear. It must concern us all. And it poses a continuing threat to the legitimacy of any subsequent administrations. “