Republican Senator Josh Hawley said he will object to the certification of the Electoral College votes for Joe Biden as president when Congress convenes on Jan. 6, defying warnings from GOP leaders against staging a doomed-to-fail spectacle.
“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws,” Hawley, of Missouri, said in a statement. “And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden.”
John Thune, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said last week that attempts to object to the electoral count would “go down like a shot dog in the Senate.” He advised GOP lawmakers who plan to take part in the effort to reconsider.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who leads a Democratic majority in the chamber, said Wednesday that the objections from a handful of Republicans won’t change the outcome.
“I have no doubt that next Wednesday, a week from today that Joe Biden will be confirmed by the acceptance of the vote of the Electoral College as the 46th president of the United States,” she said.
Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama said earlier this month that he will object to the declaration and is likely to be joined in that effort by other House Republicans, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. An objection to any state by both a senator and a representative triggers up to two hours of debate in the respective chambers. If President Donald Trump’s supporters object to more than one state, the procedure could drag on for several hours.
“At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections,” Hawley said. “But Congress has so far failed to act.”
Hawley’s statement made reference to previous attempts by Democrats in Congress to object to election results, saying they were “praised by Democratic leadership and the media” when they made them. Hawley said Democrats were entitled to make those objections and so are those now raising issues.
Democratic objections after the 2000 and 2016 elections failed for lack of a participating senator, and an objection over the Ohio votes in 2005 by former Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California and former Democratic U.S. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones was voted down.Election law experts say any objection to electoral votes for Biden on Jan. 6 would almost certainly fail because the Democratic-controlled House would reject it, and there are enough Republican senators who have acknowledged Biden’s victory to oppose it.
The electoral vote process will be presided over by Vice President Mike Pence, who could find himself in the awkward position of having to gavel down objections raised by supporters who want to keep him and Trump in office.
Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, has sued Pence seeking to force him to disregard states’ chosen Democratic electors and instead select competing slates of GOP electors.
“The Constitution expressly designates defendant Pence as the individual who decides which set of electoral votes, or neither, to count,” Gohmert said in the suit, filed Sunday in federal court in Texas.