Ted Cruz leading Senate effort to challenge 2020 election when Electoral College meets Wednesday: report
Sen. Ted Cruz is leading a last-ditch GOP Senate charge to chuck the 2020 presidential election.
The Texas Republican heads a coalition of 11 senators who declared Saturday they’ll vote against certain state electors unless Congress appoints an electoral commission to do an immediate audit of the election results — a long-shot bid unlikely to change anything.
“We intend to vote on Jan. 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed,” they wrote in the statement.
“We do not take this action lightly,” they said.
President-elect Joe Biden is set to be inaugurated Jan. 20; he won the Electoral College vote 306-232. President Trump, the first president to lose a reelection bid in almost 30 years, has been pushing hard on Republicans to pursue his unfounded charges of widespread election fraud.
Numerous courts, including the Supreme Court, have already tossed out challenges made by the Trump campaign and other supporters.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has said he’d challenge the Electoral College tally, but the Cruz and allies’ move is separate.
The list of those in the Cruz’s corner reportedly include familiar conservative Senate voices: Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Jim Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Mike Braun of Indiana.
A gaggle of newly elected GOP senators will be included too: Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
Trump gloated the uphill push might gain traction in the Senate, tweeting “after they see the facts, plenty more to come... Our Country will love them for it!”
On the other end of the GOP spectrum, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, in a social media post, wrote that “I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election,” and urged “my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York was among Democrats who pushed back, tweeting “Joe Biden and Kamala Haarris will be President and Vice President of the United States in 18 days.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also refuted the push, calling it an attempt to “undermine American democracy and our Constitution,” and tweeting: “They will not succeed.”
Any lawmaker in the Senate and House can raise an objection to their state’s election results. If both a representative and a senator object to an individual state’s result, members of the House and Senate head to their separate chambers to debate and vote on whether to uphold the challenge. Each vote could take up to two hours.
“We are letting people vote their conscience,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the second-ranking Republican, said Saturday at the Capitol, where the GOP leadership hasn’t been putting its muscle behind Trump’s demands to keep pursuing his claims of election fraud.
“This is an issue that’s incredibly consequential, incredibly rare historically and very precedent-setting,” he said. “This is a big vote. They are thinking about it.”
With News Wire Services
