Sasse Rebukes ‘Dangerous Ploy’ Fight Biden Election Win
Washington – Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska issued a pointed rebuke last week of GOP attempts to object to today’s Electoral College tally of the presidential election, warning colleagues against a “dangerous ploy” that could damage the nation’s civic traditions.
However, a growing number of Republican lawmakers were joining President Donald Trump’s extraordinary effort to overturn the election in the past few days, pledging to reject the results when Congress meets to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas on Saturday announced a coalition of 11 senators and senators-elect who have been enlisted for Trump’s effort to subvert the will of American voters. That followed a declaration from Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who was the first to buck Senate leadership by saying he would join with House Republicans in objecting to the state tallies during Wednesday’s joint session of Congress.
Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat is tearing the party apart as Republicans are forced to make consequential choices that will set the contours of the post-Trump era. Hawley and Cruz are both among potential 2024 presidential contenders.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had urged his party not to try to overturn what nonpartisan election officials have concluded was a free and fair vote.
The senators planning to object largely acknowledged Saturday they will not succeed in preventing Biden from being inaugurated on Jan. 20 after he won the Electoral College 306-232. But their challenges, and those from House Republicans, represent the most sweeping effort to undo a presidential election outcome since the Civil War.
“We do not take this action lightly,” Cruz and the other senators said in a joint statement.
They vowed to vote against certain state electors on Wednesday unless Congress appoints an electoral commission to immediately conduct an audit of the election results. They are zeroing in on the states where Trump has raised unfounded claims of voter fraud. Congress is unlikely to agree to their demand.
Sasse, a potential 2024 presidential contender, posted a lengthy explanation of his views on social media, including a paragraph by paragraph dismantling of allegations of voter fraud in key states won by Biden. Sasse said he felt compelled to speak “truth” as constituents and those supporting Trump wanted to know where he stands.
“I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election,” Sasse wrote. He said he wanted to explain “why I have been urging my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy.”
Trump, the first president to lose a reelection bid in almost 30 years, has attributed his defeat to widespread voter fraud, despite nonpartisan election officials saying there wasn’t any.
Some Republicans in the Democratic-majority House have already said they will object on Trump’s behalf during the electoral vote count. They need a single senator to go along with them to force votes in both chambers.
Sasse took aim at the “swampy” nature of Trump’s fundraising off the election challenge as he outlined his reasons for believing Biden’s electoral win is valid.
“Since Election Day, the president and his allied organizations have raised well over half a billion (billion!) dollars from supporters who have been led to believe that they’re contributing to a ferocious legal defense,” Sasse wrote. “But in reality, they’re mostly just giving the president and his allies a blank check that can go to their super-PACs, their next plane trip, their next campaign or project. That’s not serious governing. It’s swampy politics.”
He put the election challenges being waged by Trump’s legal team in Nebraska terms.
Sasse wrote that he couldn’t “simply allege that the College Football Playoff Selection Committee is ‘on the take’ because they didn’t send the Cornhuskers to the Rose Bowl, and then – after I fail to show evidence that anyone on the Selection Committee is corrupt – argue that we need to investigate because of these pervasive ‘allegations’ of corruption.”
With 160 million votes nationwide, there will be some instances of fraud, he said, but nothing of the magnitude to overturn the election.
“We have good reason to think this year’s election was fair, secure, and law-abiding,” Sasse wrote. “That’s not to say it was flawless. But there is no evidentiary basis for distrusting our elections altogether, or for concluding that the results do not reflect the ballots that our fellow citizens actually cast.”
Without giving specifics or evidence, Hawley said that he would object because “some states, including notably Pennsylvania,” did not follow their own election laws.
Some states made changes to their election procedures, such as expanding absentee voting, to accommodate voters during the coronavirus pandemic, the worst U.S. public health emergency in a century. Lawsuits challenging Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania have been unsuccessful.
“At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections,” Hawley said in a statement. He also criticized the way Facebook and Twitter handled content related to the election, characterizing it as an effort to help Biden.
Biden’s transition spokesman, Mike Gwin, dismissed the effort as a “stunt” that won’t change the fact that Biden will be sworn in Jan. 20.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the panel overseeing the Electoral College count. said the Republican effort to create a federal commission “to supersede state certifications” is wrong.
“It is undemocratic. It is un-American. And fortunately it will be unsuccessful. In the end, democracy will prevail,” she said in a statement.
When Congress convenes to certify the Electoral College results, any lawmaker can object to a state’s votes on any grounds. But the objection is not taken up unless it is in writing and signed by both a member of the House and a member of the Senate.
When there is such a request, then the joint session suspends and the House and Senate go into separate sessions to consider it. For the objection to be sustained, both chambers must agree to it by a simple majority vote. If they disagree, the original electoral votes are counted.
As president of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence will preside over Wednesday’s session and declare the winner.
The convening of the joint session to count the Electoral College votes is usually routine. While objections have surfaced before – in 2017, several House Democrats challenged Trump’s win – few have approached this level of intensity.
A range of nonpartisan election officials and Republicans have confirmed there was no fraud in the contest that would change the results of the election. That includes former Attorney General William Barr, who said he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel to look into the president’s claims about the 2020 election.
Trump and his allies have filed roughly 50 lawsuits challenging election results, and nearly all have been dismissed or dropped. He’s also lost twice at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The group of House Republicans has said it plans to challenge the election results from Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada. All are states that Biden carried.
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