On January 6, 2021, Congress will meet in a joint session to formally count the votes of the Electoral College. The states have already certified their votes and counted their own electors; Biden won with 306 to 232 for Trump. As per the Electoral Count Act of 1887, Congress must now count the electoral votes as submitted by the states.
This is one of the last steps in the process for the November 2020 election, which was deemed the “most secure” election in American history. As Republican Senator Ben Sasse (NE) has stated, “not a single state is in legal doubt“; every legal attempt to prove election fraud — “an effort that now includes about 60 lawsuits—has flopped.” The U.S. attorney general at the time of the election, William Barr, has also found no evidence of widespread fraud in this year’s election.
Yet President Trump has refused to concede, and both he and his supporters have repeatedly sought to pressure state and federal officials to alter the outcome of the election. These efforts culminated Saturday in a call to the Georgia secretary of state during which the president nakedly asked for the necessary votes to be “found.” This pattern of utilizing extra-normative pressure and intimidation is also exhibited in the president’s call for protestors to gather in the nation’s capital during this joint session.
Unbelievably, members of Congress have decided to join Trump’s attacks on the democratic process. More than two dozen House Republicans have said they will try to challenge results, and Senator Ted Cruz is spearheading an effort involving up to a dozen Republican senators to demand in a joint session of Congress that they conduct an “emergency audit” of only the presidential election results.
To do:
Contact your Republican members of Congress to let them know the attack on our elections must stop and the votes of the Electoral College must be counted as they have been certified by the states. In the interest of time, we suggest that you call their offices immediately. You can access phone numbers here. Ask the staffer for the member of Congress’s position on the certification and either thank them or encourage them to change course immediately based on their answer.
Background:
On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, Congress will meet in a joint session to formally count the votes of the Electoral College. The states have already counted their own electors; Biden won with 306 to 232 for Trump. As per the Electoral Count Act of 1887, Congress must now count the votes as submitted by the states. This is one of the last steps in the electoral process for the November 2020 election.
Yet President Trump has refused to concede, and both he and his supporters have repeatedly sought to pressure state and federal officials to alter the outcome of the election. These efforts culminated Saturday in a call to the Georgia secretary of state during which the president nakedly asked for the necessary votes to be “found.” This pattern of utilizing extra-normative pressure and intimidation is also exhibited in the president’s call for protestors to gather in the nation’s capital during this joint session.
Unbelievably, members of Congress have decided to join Trump’s attacks on the democratic process. More than two dozen House Republicans have said they will try to challenge results, and Senator Ted Cruz is spearheading an effort involving up to a dozen GOP senators — including Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, and Mike Braun, as well as Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, and Tommy Tuberville — with Josh Hawley making his own challenge, to demand an “emergency audit” of only the presidential election. The 11 senators claim the elections “featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud and illegal conduct.”
But as Republican Senator Ben Sasse (NE) has written, “If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn’t and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.” Sasse pointed out that “not a single state is in legal doubt.” Every legal attempt to prove election fraud — “an effort that now includes about 60 lawsuits—has flopped.” The U.S. attorney general at the time of the election, William Barr, has also found no evidence of widespread fraud in this year’s election. Indeed, the November election was deemed the “most secure” election in American history. There are no legal grounds for demanding an emergency audit.
Cruz and the co-signers of his statement contend that an election audit directed by Congress is needed to restore trust in the U.S. election. We concur with Senator Mitt Romney’s rebuttal: “Nonsense. This argument ignores the widely perceived reality that Congress is an overwhelmingly partisan body.”
Finally, Cruz and his colleagues claim there is historical precedent for Congress “to appoint an electoral commission to audit results where they are disputed. They cite as precedent the 1877 contest between Samuel [Tilden] and Rutherford Hayes, where there were allegations of fraud in several states.” It is telling that they chose just this historical moment. Students of American history know the result. The “Compromise of 1877” resulted in the U.S. federal government pulling the last troops out of the South and ending the Reconstruction Era. Black Americans were rapidly and completely disenfranchised. Civil rights were pushed back a century. In our day, any attempts to disregard the votes of hundreds of millions of Americans must be rejected as disenfranchisement. As Republican Senator Mitt Romney wrote, “More Americans participated in this election than ever before, and they made their choice” (see also here).
American voters have made their choice. They are the authority here, and in the words of former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, “It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans.”
As MWEG’s Principles of Ethical Government state, elected officials must be “honest and transparent” and “eschew conflicts of interest and avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest in fidelity to the public trust.” To those members of Congress unwilling to do this, we again quote Senator Romney: “I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world. Has ambition so eclipsed principle?“
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