Senator Mitch McConnell Slams Efforts To Challenge Electoral College Votes
Senator Mitch McConnell delivered a fiery speech on the Senate floor Wednesday ahead of the Joint Session session of Congress as some Republican lawmakers publicly announced earlier they will object to the Electoral College vote.
The Senate Majority Leader rebuked his fellow Republicans and warned against refusing to certify Democratic candidate Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
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Full remarks of historic speech by @senatemajldr Mitch McConnell pic.twitter.com/c37aSJuz9q
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“We cannot simply declare ourselves a national board of elections on steroids. The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. They’ve all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever,” McConnell said.
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We’d never see our country accept an election again.”
Despite multiple evidence raised by the campaign of President Donald Trump related to election fraud and voter irregularities in some key states, McConnell claimed on Wednesday that there’s not enough evidence to overturn the election.
“Nothing before us proves illegality of the massive scale that would have tipped the entire election,” the Kentucky senator said. “Nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break when the doubt was incited without any evidence.”
In what seemed like a direct swipe at the dozen Republican senators — including Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) and Josh Hawley (Missouri) — who publicly said they would upend the process of certifying the Electoral College vote results along with roughly 140 House members, McConnell said such a move is not merely a “protest” vote.
“I will not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest gesture,” he said in his eight-minute remark. “I will vote to respect the people’s decision and defend our system of government as we know it.”
Congress is slated to certify Biden’s win today.
Earlier Vice President Mike Pence said he doesn’t have the power to “accept or reject” votes but welcomed similar efforts by GOP lawmakers “to use their authority under the law to raise objections and present evidence” of election irregularities and voter fraud that took place on November 3.
“Those who suggest that raising objections under the Electoral Count Act is improper or undemocratic ignore more than 130 years of history, and fail to acknowledge that Democrats raised objections in Congress each of the last three times that a Republican candidate for President prevailed,” Pence earlier said in a statement.
Meanwhile, addressing the full Senate, McConnell said: “We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate realities with nothing in common except our hostility for each other.”
“The United States Senate has a higher calling than an endless spiral of partisan vengeance,” he added. “I believe protecting our constitutional order requires recognizing the limits of our own power.”
