Last updated June 30, 2022
Quick Facts:
- 34 U.S. senators made statements that could be viewed as seeking to undermine the credibility of the 2020 presidential election.
- Some statements directly questioned the legitimacy of the election, such as accusing Democrats of “dirty tricks” or stating that dead people and nonresidents voted in swing states.
- Other statements appear innocuous but could suggest an illegitimate result, such as “legal votes should be counted, illegal votes should not.”
- Eight senators voted to reject the electoral votes from Arizona, Pennsylvania, or both.
- An additional seven senators had planned to reject electoral votes, but changed their minds following the Capital Building riots on January 6, 2021.
- Many senators spoke out against mail-in ballots, which were used in greater numbers in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The chart below shows statements made by U.S. senators related to the credibility of the 2020 election. Many of the statements can easily be read as an attack on the legitimacy of the election, such as stating that dead people and non-citizens voted. These statements often implied that such illegal actions wrongly allowed Biden to win the election. Other statements appear to be correct at face value, but could suggest that the election result was inaccurate. Stating that only legal votes should be counted, for example, suggests that illegal votes were cast and might have been included in some states’ totals, unfairly giving Biden the Electoral College win.
To date, no third party has judged these fraud claims to be true in any way that could have impacted the election outcome.[1]PBS NewsHour, “Exhaustive Fact Check Finds Little Evidence of Voter Fraud, But 2020’s ‘Big Lie’ Lives On,” pbs.org, December 21, 2021
The number of statements made by each senator is shown in brackets. Click a name to jump to that senator’s statements.
- John Barrasso (R-WY) [6]
- Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)** [20]
- John Boozman (R-AR) [1]
- Mike Braun (R-IN)** [13]
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA) [1]
- Tom Cotton (R-AR) [3]
- Kevin Cramer (R-ND) [4]
- Mike Crapo (R-ID) [1]
- Ted Cruz (R-TX)* [37]
- Steve Daines (R-MT)** [4]
- Deb Fischer (R-NE) [1]
- Lindsey Graham (R-SC) [21]
- Chuck Grassley (R-IA) [1]
- Bill Hagerty (R-TN)** [62]
- Josh Hawley (R-MO)* [32]
- Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)* [4]
- Jim Inhofe (R-OK) [3]
- Ron Johnson (R-WI)** [30]
- John Kennedy (R-LA)* [10]
- James Lankford (R-OK)** [11]
- Mike Lee (R-UT) [2]
- Kelly Loeffler (R-GA)** [13]
- Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)* [12]
- Roger Marshall (R-KS)* [6]
- Rand Paul (R-KY) [21]
- David Perdue (R-GA) [5]
- Rob Portman (R-OH) [3]
- Jim Risch (R-ID) [1]
- Marco Rubio (R-FL) [1]
- Rick Scott (R-FL)* [14]
- Tim Scott (R-SC) [2]
- Thom Tillis (R-NC) [1]
- Tommy Tuberville (R-AL)* [5]
- Roger Wicker (R-MS) [1]
*Senators who voted to reject electoral votes from Arizona, Pennsylvania, or both.
**Senators who had said they would vote to reject electoral votes from one or more states but did not go through with it following the Capitol riots.[2]Caroline Linton and Melissa Quinn, “Key Republican Senators Withdraw Objections to Electoral College Count After Capitol Siege,” cbsnews.com, January 7, 2021
| 1. SENATOR JOHN BARRASSO (R-WY) | |
|---|---|
| 1. | 11/6/2020 “As vote totals continue to update, Americans deserve confidence in a fair and transparent election. The President is right to ensure all legally-cast votes be observed and counted.” -John Barrasso, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 3:36 pm |
| 2. | 12/3/2020 “Well this is all very disturbing information that you’ve just presented, Harris [Faulkner, Fox News host], and the American people are seeing that it needs to be investigated quickly and fully because what we’re hearing about is election fraud, and that needs to be prosecuted and punished. What we know is that this election has been like no other, in terms of mail-in ballots, and the volume of those ballots.” -John Barrasso via David Rutz, “Barrasso: Democrats performing ‘dirty tricks’ to win Georgia Senate runoffs,” foxnews.com, December 3, 2020 |
| 3. | 12/3/2020 “We need to make sure there was a fair election, there is integrity in the system, because that’s the basis of our nation. And especially with this upcoming special election in Georgia, where the balance of the senate plays in there, we can see already the dirty tricks being done by Democrats in Georgia, again.” -John Barrasso via David Rutz, “Barrasso: Democrats performing ‘dirty tricks’ to win Georgia Senate runoffs,” foxnews.com, December 3, 2020 |
| 4. | 12/3/2020 “When you hear reports like that of what’s happening in Georgia, it makes your blood boil. This sounds like fraud, it sounds like something that there’s a criminal element to this. This needs to be prosecuted, punished, people need to be arrested here. Dead people can’t vote. People living in New York can’t vote in Georgia.” -John Barrasso via David Rutz, “Barrasso: Democrats performing ‘dirty tricks’ to win Georgia Senate runoffs,” foxnews.com, December 3, 2020 |
| 5. | 12/3/2020 “But when Chuck Schumer said, ‘First we take Georgia, then we change America,’ he didn’t say ‘win in Georgia,’ he said ‘take Georgia.’ Which is why I’m so concerned about these dirty tricks.” -John Barrasso via David Rutz, “Barrasso: Democrats performing ‘dirty tricks’ to win Georgia Senate runoffs,” foxnews.com, December 3, 2020 |
| 6. | 12/3/2020 “Election fraud should be investigated quickly & thoroughly. We need to make sure this was a fair election & there is integrity in the system because that’s the basis of our nation. An unfairly elected Democrat controlled House, Senate & White House is not what Americans want.” -John Barrasso, Twitter.com, December 3, 2020 2:39 pm |
| 2. SENATOR MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN) | |
|---|---|
| 7. | 11/5/2020 “It’s a shame that we have to fight for a fair election in the greatest democracy the world has ever known, but we do. Stand with me to ensure that all LEGALLY cast votes are counted.” -Marsha Blackburn, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 7:08 pm |
| 8. | 11/6/2020 “It should be neither controversial nor partisan to suggest that: – Every legal vote should be counted – Illegally cast votes shouldn’t be counted – There should be transparency in elections” -Marsha Blackburn, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 12:53 pm |
| 9. | 11/6/2020 “It’s a shame that we have to fight for a fair election in the greatest democracy the world has ever known, but we do. One of the best ways to do so is by joining me in donating to the President’s legal defense fund. President Donald Trump has always had our backs, and now, Tennesseans need to have his to make sure every single legally cast ballot is counted.” -Marsha Blackburn, “RELEASE: Marsha Blackburn Donates To President Trump’s Election Defense Fund,” marshablackburn.com, November 6, 2020 |
| 10. | 12/7/2020 “What happened this November was a warning sign that America’s free and fair elections can’t be taken for granted. More than ever, we need strong state voting laws on the books. Today I joined Senator Cruz and my colleagues in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of Arizona, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided against the will of elected representatives and set out to strike down the state’s voting laws. As the brief explains, we fear that the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation ‘will jeopardize several facially neutral and entirely legitimate laws that States have adopted to deter and prevent voter fraud.’ It is my hope the Supreme Court will uphold the constitutional prerogative of states to pass essential voter protection laws. The integrity of future elections is at stake.” -Marsha Blackburn, Facebook.com, December 7, 2020 6:17 pm |
| 11. | 12/9/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is fighting to protect the integrity of our election system. This amicus brief will help the patriots standing with Pres. Trump and fighting back against election fraud. We must ensure one person, one vote.” -Marsha Blackburn, Facebook.com, December 9, 2020 2:46pm |
| 12. | 12/9/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is working to ensure transparency and integrity within our election system. I fully support Tennessee’s joining of the amicus brief in the Texas lawsuit to ensure states abide by the Constitution when it comes to our elections.” -Marsha Blackburn, Twitter.com, December 9, 2020 4:47pm |
| 13. | 12/9/2020 “President Trump is well within his right to exercise every legal resource to ensure integrity within our election system, and we should all be standing with him every step of the way – this is not a partisan issue. This amicus brief will provide additional support to the patriots standing with President Trump and fighting back against election fraud – we must have transparency in our election system. In America, it’s one person, one vote. It’s imperative that our states maintain integrity in their elections, especially as Democrats look to take Georgia and change the soul of America.” -Marsha Blackburn, “RELEASE: Senator Blackburn Continues To Stand With President Trump And Fight For Integrity Within Our Election System,” marshablackburn.com, December 9, 2020 |
| 14. | 1/2/2021 “I cannot in good conscience turn a blind eye to the countless allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. On January 6, I will vote in favor of objecting to the certification of the electoral college results.” -Marsha Blackburn, Twitter.com, January 2, 2021 1:58 pm |
| 15. | 1/2/2021 “Tennesseans elected us as their United States Senators to represent their views and values in Washington and to always fight for them, which is why we have concluded without any reservation that we will stand against tainted electoral results from the recent Presidential election. We know that our elections, built around the Electoral College which is a fundamental element, are the envy of the world. Protecting their integrity and ensuring the results are free and fair are critical to maintaining the trust of our own citizens. Since November 3, hardworking men and women from across Tennessee have contacted us to justifiably express anger and concern that some states conducted the recent election in a manner that did not respect the rule of law and may have violated many of their state constitutions as well as Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Many are concerned about the sanctity of the one person one vote guarantee.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “RELEASE: Blackburn, Hagerty To Oppose The Certification Of The Electoral College Vote,” marshablackburn.com, January 2, 2021 |
| 16. | 1/2/2021 “On behalf of Tennesseans, we are taking a united stand against the tainted electoral results from the recent Presidential election. American democracy relies on the consent of the governed. Allegations of voter fraud, irregularities and unconstitutional actions diminish public confidence in what should be a free, fair and transparent process. Protecting the integrity of the electoral process is paramount to preserving trust and legitimacy in the final outcome. For critical moments like these, the Constitution reserves the right to challenge the Electoral College results to members of Congress. On January 6, we will vote to oppose certification of the 2020 election results.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “RELEASE: Blackburn, Hagerty To Oppose The Certification Of The Electoral College Vote,” marshablackburn.com, January 2, 2021 |
| 17. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 18. | 1/3/2021 “Millions of Tennesseans and Americans are concerned about the sanctity of the one person, one vote guarantee. Despite the constant drumbeat that it’s time to move on, they know the rules of the game were changed while the game was still being played. It is our responsibility as their Senators to fight for their concerns. We cannot ignore what happened in this presidential election. Several states conducted their elections in a way that undermines the constitutional framework that has made our elections the envy of the world. And because of their tactics, Tennesseans lack confidence in the results, and our nation may be deprived of President Trump’s bold leadership.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “Blackburn & Hagerty: Protecting the Sanctity and Value of Each American’s Vote,” breitbart.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 19. | 1/3/2021 “More than 74 million Americans who voted for President Donald Trump have justifiably lost confidence in the electoral system because election laws in decisive battleground states were ignored or altered outside of the legislative process. Tennesseans elected us to fight for their views and values in Washington, which certainly means upholding the rule of law, and we plan to exercise our constitutionally prescribed role of reviewing the electoral college results to ensure that those voices we represent are heard.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “Blackburn & Hagerty: Protecting the Sanctity and Value of Each American’s Vote,” breitbart.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 20. | 1/3/2021 “Understandably, Americans are questioning the results of an election in which the laws designed to ensure fair and secure voting were rewritten at the last minute by unaccountable bureaucrats who had no authority to do so. The Electoral College is an essential element of our republic, and each American deserves to have complete confidence in our country’s election results. That’s why we are opposing the unconstitutional, unreliable election processes. We must protect the sanctity of the ballot box because if we ignore these issues now, then nothing will change and the trust in future elections — the bedrock of our representative form of government — will be shaken forever.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “Blackburn & Hagerty: Protecting the Sanctity and Value of Each American’s Vote,” breitbart.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 21. | 1/3/2021 “At the eleventh-hour this year, the radical Left, unelected bureaucrats, and special interest groups in several key states used the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to improperly rewrite or ignore election laws, which led to universal mail-in ballots and other less secure methods of voting, which overwhelmed the election system and prevented adequate oversight of the new processes. As a result, ballots were less scrutinized and vote counting was chaotic, haphazard, and often-unobserved. Then, once the vote-counting began, all of the ballots were mixed together, nullifying any attempt to audit the results appropriately. This is the outcome that the activists and special interest groups wanted — change the rules in a way that is impossible to unwind.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “Blackburn & Hagerty: Protecting the Sanctity and Value of Each American’s Vote,” breitbart.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 22. | 1/4/2021 “Tennesseans are passionate about preserving one person one vote and the integrity of the electoral system. For 4 years Democrats called @realDonaldTrump’s 2016 election illegitimate. For the 2020 elections, let’s determine what happened in these disputed states.” -Marsha Blackburn, Twitter.com, January 4, 2021 12:55 pm |
| 23. | 1/6/2021 “The fight for election integrity starts right now.” -Marsha Blackburn, Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 9:59 am |
| 24. | 1/6/2021 “Bill Hagerty and I will do everything in our power to guarantee that settled, transparent, and democratically enacted election laws are never again thrown aside at the last minute.” -Marsha Blackburn, Facebook.com, January 6, 2021 12:00 pm |
| 25. | 1/6/2021 “Last night, I joined @ShannonBream [on Fox News] to discuss why I am opposing the certification of the Electoral College results today. We must make certain all LEGAL votes are counted and all illegal votes are not, in order to protect the sanctity of each American’s vote.” -Marsha Blackburn, Facebook.com, January 6, 2021 12:59 pm |
| 26. | 1/6/2021 “We had some of your local election administrators changing the rules of the election, and they were saying, ‘Well, we did it because of COVID.’ Well, you can’t do that. And our US Constitution is explicit. You give the authority of time, place, and manner of elections to your state legislature. They’re the ones that are to set those rules. And we have had issues. So, preserving one person, one vote. Making certain all legal votes are counted, illegal votes are cast out, and having a commission to settle this, we think is the appropriate step.” -Marsha Blackburn in an interview on Fox News, video via Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 12:59 pm |
| 3. SENATOR JOHN BOOZMAN (R-AR) | |
|---|---|
| 27. | 1/5/2021 “Many Americans are concerned about the integrity of the election. I too share the belief that allegations of irregularities and fraud need to be investigated –– especially at a time when trust in our institutions is near an all-time low. We need to make sure that every legal vote cast is counted and we must have the ability to verify the ballots. Congress has a role in examining the concerns that have arisen and should support states’ efforts to address the security of our elections. The Senate will continue to focus attention on this issue moving forward, and I am very supportive of efforts to establish a commission to probe the 2020 presidential election and ensure that all Americans have faith in future elections.” -John Boozman, “Boozman Statement on Formal Count of Electoral College Votes,” boozman.senate.gov, January 5, 2021 |
| 4. SENATOR MIKE BRAUN (R-IN) | |
|---|---|
| 28. | 11/5/2020 “President Trump is right to hold states and local officials accountable to their own laws and make sure all legal ballots are counted. Fraudulent votes disenfranchise legal voters. We should all want a result that is fair and can be trusted by the American people.” -Mike Braun, “Senator Braun: President Trump is right to hold states and local officials accountable to their own laws,” braun.senate.gov, November 5, 2020 |
| 29. | 11/10/2020 “I’m clearly from the position that the process needs to play itself out. Every legal vote needs to be counted. Any concern about irregularities, especially any fraud that might be present, I think it behooves all Americans to get to the bottom of it.” -Mike Braun, Twitter.com, November 10, 2020 4:15 pm |
| 30. | 12/2/2020 “The Trump campaign has raised questions about how ballots were verified and, I believe, has found sufficient irregularities to merit further investigation. For example, though the partial Wisconsin recount changed a minimal number of votes from one candidate to another, the recount revealed absentee ballots that were counted without an absentee ballot request on file — a violation of Wisconsin law. Municipal clerks were found to have been illegally fixing errors on absentee ballot envelopes.” -Mike Braun, “Sen. Mike Braun: It’s about election integrity, not overturning election results,” washingtonexaminer.com, Dec. 2, 2020 |
| 31. | 12/2/2020 “In Nevada, a whistleblower filed an affidavit stating that he personally witnessed workers disregarding signature verification and superiors telling them to push ballots through without verification. For the first time ever this year, Nevada mailed ballots to every registered voter, leading to untold numbers of ballots being sent to outdated addresses and deceased voters. This comes in addition to Nevada’s use of a machine to verify signatures on ballots, raising questions about whether any of those signatures were properly vetted. The media was more than willing to accept any whistleblower report that alleged malfeasance by Trump, but not those blowing the whistle on irregular signature verification.” -Mike Braun, “Sen. Mike Braun: It’s about election integrity, not overturning election results,” washingtonexaminer.com, Dec. 2, 2020 |
| 32. | 12/2/2020 “The media has fundamentally failed the public by refusing to investigate any question about the integrity of widespread mail-in voting in the 2020 election and by dismissing all concern over documented election irregularities as conspiracy theories.” -Mike Braun, “Sen. Mike Braun: It’s about election integrity, not overturning election results,” washingtonexaminer.com, Dec. 2, 2020 |
| 33. | 12/2/2020 “Asking questions about how millions of mail-in ballots were verified and processed is not sour grapes over an election loss. I agree with President Trump that whomever is affirmed by the Electoral College should take office on Jan. 20. But the broader issue of election integrity is at stake here. Everyone needs to feel confident their vote is being legally counted and that election boards are only counting legally cast votes. We can only achieve this by vigorously investigating every hint of impropriety, which the media has declined to do.” -Mike Braun, “Sen. Mike Braun: It’s about election integrity, not overturning election results,” washingtonexaminer.com, Dec. 2, 2020 |
| 34. | 12/2/2020 “In Philadelphia, the Trump campaign had to go to court in order to allow poll watchers to be within 6 feet of the ballot counting rather than 20 feet away.” -Mike Braun, “Sen. Mike Braun: It’s about election integrity, not overturning election results,” washingtonexaminer.com, Dec. 2, 2020 |
| 35. | 12/2/2020 “I am not an election expert, but I agree with the many folks in Indiana and across the country who don’t understand why we wouldn’t further investigate these irregularities. To me, the important question is not whether enough votes will change hands to alter the result in any given state. The priority should be whether the large percentage of voters, some of whom elected me as their voice in the Senate, can be confident that our electoral process is free and fair. Failure to look into claims of voter fraud would be a dereliction of duty… Even if the media will not admit that any of the allegations in sworn affidavits regarding election irregularities occurred, they should at least admit that it benefits all of us to investigate every claim of voter fraud or election interference.” -Mike Braun, “Sen. Mike Braun: It’s about election integrity, not overturning election results,” washingtonexaminer.com, Dec. 2, 2020 |
| 36. | 12/6/2020 “When you just say that there’s nothing there, you’re going to have half of the country uncertain about what just happened and disgruntled going into the future… Let’s look at what the secretary of state did not mention in Georgia, you know the video, where after a counting place closed, you see boxes of ballots coming out from underneath the table… Or what about Wisconsin, where there were a couple hundred thousand absentee ballot that got cast without a request for it.” -Mike Braun in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, video via Twitter.com, December 6, 2020 11:05 am |
| 37. | 12/14/2020 “I, like many Hoosiers, am disappointed by the results of the Electoral College vote, but today marks a watershed moment where we must put aside politics and respect the constitutional process that determines the winner of our Presidential election. However, the results of the Electoral College should not diminish the need to continue a thorough investigation into the irregularities and credible allegations of fraud related to the unprecedented level of mail-in voting in the 2020 election. I will continue to call on State Governments, the Courts, and Congress to investigate the 2020 elections and take actions to restore integrity to the process so the American people can have faith in our democratic institutions.” -Mike Braun, “Senator Braun Statement on Electoral College Vote,” braun.senate.gov, December 14, 2020 |
| 38. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 39. | 1/6/2021 “Speaking and listening to Hoosier @realDonaldTrump supporters who came to DC from Indiana about why I will object today and support an emergency audit into irregularities in the 2020 election.” -Mike Braun, Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 1:20 pm |
| 40. | 1/6/2021 “Today’s events changed things drastically. Though I will continue to push for a thorough investigation into the election irregularities many Hoosiers are concerned with as my objection was intended, I have withdrawn that objection and will vote to get this ugly day behind us.” -Mike Braun, Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 9:31 pm |
| 5. SENATOR BILL CASSIDY (R-LA) | |
|---|---|
| 41. | 1/5/2021 “Let’s be clear, there were problems in the election. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security has already held a hearing. The committee found that there were isolated incidents of fraud. The Republican chairman of the committee said, however, that although isolated incidences of fraud occurred, they would not have changed the results of the election. Still, there should be a committee or commission investigating and addressing the problems that did occur.” -Bill Cassidy, Facebook.com, January 5, 2021 10:22 pm |
| 6. SENATOR TOM COTTON (R-AR) | |
|---|---|
| 42. | 11/5/2020 “All votes that are *legally* cast should be counted. There is NO excuse not to allow poll watchers to observe counting. Support @realDonaldTrump’s legal defense” -Tom Cotton, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 5:06 pm |
| 43. | 1/3/2021 “I share the concerns of many Arkansans about irregularities in the presidential election, especially in states that rushed through election-law changes to relax standards for voting-by-mail. I also share their disappointment with the election results. I therefore support a commission to study the last election and propose reforms to protect the integrity of our elections. And after Republicans win in Georgia, the Senate should also hold more hearings on these matters. All Americans deserve to have confidence in the elections that undergird our free government.” -Tom Cotton, “Cotton Statement on Joint Session of Congress,” cotton.senate.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 44. | 1/5/2021 “I will not oppose the counting of certified electoral votes. Of course, I share the concerns of many Arkansans about irregularities in the election, especially in states that rushed through election-law changes to relax standards for voting by mail. Some states sent unsolicited ballots to their residents, opening the door to potential fraud. States also removed important safeguards, such as signature-matching and postal-marking requirements. I therefore support a commission to examine the last election and propose reforms to protect the integrity of our elections. After Republicans win in Georgia, the Senate should also hold more hearings on these matters. Arkansans deserve to have confidence in the elections that undergird our free government.” -Tom Cotton, “Opinion: Duty of Congress,” arkansasonline.com, January 5, 2021 |
| 7. SENATOR KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND) | |
|---|---|
| 45. | 11/22/2020 “Remember, we’ve also never in history, in this century or any other century, had a massive vote by mail balloting where there was things like ballot harvesting, and ballot curing, things that we’ve never even heard of before that were taking place. And frankly, a much, much lower rejection rate of mail-in ballots than just four years ago, when there were many fewer of them. So it’s okay to through this process [of challenging election results in court], make sure it’s being done right, make sure it never happens again if there are irregularities. We can’t ignore hundreds of signed affidavits [alleging fraud]. That’s evidence. That’s way more evidence than Robert Mueller had.” -Kevin Cramer in an interview with Chuck Todd, video via Twitter.com, November 22, 2020 11:41 am |
| 46. | 12/9/2020 “Good for North Dakota for joining this brief. Folks need to know their votes aren’t being stolen by bad actors in other states. @USSupremeCourt should hear the case & restore trust in our elections. Our US Constitution matters!” [Note: Tweet links to an article about states supporting a Texas lawsuit seeking to delay the appointment of electors from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.] -Kevin Cramer, Twitter.com, December 9, 2020 5:28 pm |
| 47. | 1/4/2021 “I share the concerns of my colleagues and the countless North Dakotans who have reached out about the election. Last year Democrats tried to use the COVID-19 pandemic to implement questionable election procedures like universal vote-by-mail, ballot harvesting, and ballot curing. These practices – and the subsequent lack of transparency in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia – have raised reasonable questions about the elections process which need to be addressed, regardless of whether or not it is enough to change the outcome of the presidential election. When Republicans raised such concerns before November, we were falsely portrayed as discouraging voter participation. We need to get answers while taking appropriate steps to ensure states run their elections in a transparent, trustworthy fashion, giving the American people confidence in our elections. This could start by launching an independent commission tasked with examining the 2020 election and offering analysis and potential changes.” -Kevin Cramer, “Sen. Cramer Statement on Objections to the Electoral College Votes on January 6th,” cramer.senate.gov, January 4, 2021 |
| 48. | 1/6/2021 “The American people deserve sufficient answers for the questions they have about the irregularities and anomalies found in the results in the 2020 election. While I don’t believe objecting to the certified Electoral College votes is a constitutional way to remedy this problem, Congress can and should play a role in providing clarity to our constituents and restoring their trust in our elections.” -Kevin Cramer, “Sen. Cramer Cosponsors Bill Establishing Election Integrity Commission,” cramer.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 8. SENATOR MIKE CRAPO (R-ID) | |
|---|---|
| 49. | 1/6/2021 “During the course of our nation’s history, there have been occurrences of voting irregularities and fraud, including in this election. Unfortunately, that always seems to be the case. It is past time that this country thoroughly examine the election process, especially in states where the allegations of fraud are the strongest, uncover the facts, and develop reforms that make our election process trustworthy. The integrity of our election process is critically important and vital to our republic. I support the establishment of a commission to study the last election and recommend meaningful reforms to protect the integrity of our elections.” -Mike Crapo, “Crapo Statement on January 6 Joint Session of Congress,” crapo.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 9. SENATOR TED CRUZ (R-TX) | |
|---|---|
| 50. | 11/5/2020 “Dem partisans claim ‘there have been observers….’ But, Dem operatives kept them so far away THEY HAD TO USE BINOCULARS to see the ballots… That’s why a PA court ordered they must be allowed WITHIN SIX FEET.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 11:26 pm |
| 51. | 11/5/2020 “What we’re seeing tonight, what we’ve been seeing the last three days is outrageous, it is partisan, it is political, and it is lawless. And we’re seeing this pattern in Democratic city after Democratic city. But the worst in the country right now is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they’re not allowing the election observers in, despite clear state law that requires election observers being there. Despite an order from a state judge saying election observers have to be within six feet of the ballot counting. They’re just ignoring the law. They’re defying the law… The reason you don’t want observers there is because you’re doing something you don’t want to be observed. And I am angry, and I think the American people are angry. Because by throwing the people out, by clouding the vote counting in a shroud of darkness, they are setting the stage to potentially steal an election.” -Ted Cruz, “Sen. Cruz on Hannity: The American People Want Every Vote That Was Legally Cast Counted,” cruz.senate.gov, Nov. 6, 2020 |
| 52. | 11/5/2020 “Big Tech presents a grave threat to free speech in America and to the integrity of our elections. Google has more power than any company on the face of the planet, and Dr. Epstein’s findings [about Google possibly directing ‘get out the vote’ messages to liberals] raise serious concerns about Google’s abuse of that power and its willingness to manipulate its platform to help Joe Biden win the presidency. Google must provide answers as to why and how it manipulated users to influence this election.” -Ted Cruz, “Sens. Cruz, Johnson, Lee Ask Google CEO to Explain Apparent Election-Related Disparities,” cruz.senate.gov, Nov. 6, 2020 |
| 53. | 11/6/2020 “When you’re breaking the law, ignoring court orders, counting ballots in secret & threatening to steal the presidency, it’s not ‘PA’s business.’ It’s America’s business, and we have the right to expect votes will be counted (1) fairly, (2) w/ transparency & (3) NOT in secret.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 11:10 am |
| 54. | 11/8/2020 “At this point we do not know who has prevailed in the election. The media is desperately trying to get everyone to coronate Joe Biden as the next president, but that’s not how it works. The media does not get to select our president, the American people get to elect our president… At this point we’ve got numerous states that are very closely and vigorously contested, from Pennsylvania to Georgia to Arizona to New Mexico to Michigan to Wisconsin. In all of those states there are serious disputes about the vote totals and there’s a legal process to resolve those disputes.” -Ted Cruz, “Sen. Cruz on Fox News: The American People – Not The Media – Get To Elect Our President,” cruz.senate.gov, November 8, 2020 |
| 55. | 11/8/2020 “What is interesting is historically mail-in votes are much more likely to be disqualified in a recount than in-person votes… I believe President Trump still has a path to victory, and that path is to count every single legal vote that was cast, but also not to [count] any votes that were fraudulently cast or illegally cast. And we have a legal process to determine what’s legal and what isn’t.” -Ted Cruz, “Sen. Cruz on Fox News: The American People – Not The Media – Get To Elect Our President,” cruz.senate.gov, November 8, 2020 |
| 56. | 11/9/2020 “The reason you have observers is to prevent fraud, to prevent ballot theft. And when you throw out one party or the other, it raises an inference that bad conduct is ongoing. Now, the fact that you or I might say that, or someone might tweet that, that’s not conclusive evidence. That needs to be determined in a court of law. I find it amazing that reporters are running around screaming, ‘no, no, we can’t resolve any of these legal matters. Anyone saying, let the litigation conclude and actually determine if it’s consistent with law is somehow undermining our democracy, that’s just ridiculous.” -Ted Cruz, “Sen. Cruz: The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want To Let Process Play Out,” cruz.senate.gov, November 10, 2020 |
| 57. | 11/11/2020 “There’s a clear violation [of laws allowing polling place observers], we know it occurred. We know it occurred in multiple places. We know it occurred in Philadelphia. We know it occurred in Detroit. In Detroit, we know they used poster board and covered up and hid the ballot counting room. In Philadelphia, they took the Republican ballot watchers and they made them— they kept them out, others they kept 20 feet or 25 feet away. If you’ve ever tried to look at a ballot, you can see anything from 25 feet away… It’s clear there was a significant chuck of votes for which there was no Republican ballot observer watching the counting… The big deal is, the reason you have the laws requiring observers from both sides, from both Republicans and Democrats, is it is a tool to prevent fraud, to prevent people from stealing the election… If someone breaks into a bank and they shut down the security cameras, are they doing it because they intend to comply with the law and they don’t intend to do anything wrong? No, the natural inference is, if you’re trying to avoid anyone seeing what you’re doing, it’s because you’re doing something you don’t want them to see.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Sean Hannity, audio via Twitter.com, November 13, 2020 11:41 am |
| 58. | 11/11/2020 “I’m hopeful, and what I expect to happen in the coming days and weeks, is for the Trump campaign to put on their evidence and hopefully to convince a fact finder, that their allegations of voter fraud are accurate and supported by the evidence.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Lou Dobbs on Fox News, video via Twitter.com, November 12, 2020 4:22 pm |
| 59. | 11/11/2020 “Mail-in voting historically has been significantly more subject to fraud, it’s more susceptible to unscrupulous operatives stealing people’s votes, engaging in vote harvesting, which we’ve seen. Unfortunately, in the era of COVID, a lot of Democratic states and Democratic jurisdictions used it as an excuse to expand mail-in voting.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Lou Dobbs on Fox News, video via Twitter.com, November 12, 2020 4:22 pm |
| 60. | 11/12/2020 “I spoke with @LouDobbs about how historically, mail-in voting has been significantly more subject to fraud. That’s why we have to allow the legal process to play out so we can have accurate #Election2020 results.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, November 12, 2020 2:34 pm |
| 61. | 11/13/2020 “This election will be decided when every legally cast ballot is counted.” -Ted Cruz, Facebook.com, November 13, 2020 5:42 pm |
| 62. | 11/13/2020 “To ensure accurate #Election2020 results we must make sure that every legal vote is counted, and that any illegal votes are excluded.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, November 13, 2020 9:30 pm |
| 63. | 11/14/2020 “In the past, mail-in voting has been subject to fraud and has undermined the integrity of our elections. We must allow the legal process to play out to ensure accurate #Election2020 results.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, November 14, 2020 8:20 pm |
| 64. | 12/1/2020 “As of today, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, 39 percent of Americans believe that ‘the election was rigged.’ That is not healthy for our democracy. The bitter division and acrimony we see across the nation needs resolution.” -Ted Cruz, “Sen. Cruz Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Emergency Appeal on Pennsylvania Election Challenge,” cruz.senate.gov, December 1, 2020 |
| 65. | 12/1/2020 “Today, an emergency appeal was filed in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the election results in Pennsylvania. This appeal raises serious legal issues, and I believe the Court should hear the case on an expedited basis. The Pennsylvania Constitution requires in-person voting, except in narrow and defined circumstances. Late last year, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law that purported to allow universal mail-in voting, notwithstanding the Pennsylvania Constitution’s express prohibition. This appeal argues that Pennsylvania cannot change the rules in the middle of the game. If Pennsylvania wants to change how voting occurs, the state must follow the law to do so.” -Ted Cruz, “Sen. Cruz Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Emergency Appeal on Pennsylvania Election Challenge,” cruz.senate.gov, December 1, 2020 |
| 66. | 12/7/2020 “Right now, it’s not healthy for our democracy what we’re seeing. In Pennsylvania, the problem was made worse because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is a partisan, Democratic court that has issued multiple decisions that were just on their face contrary to law. And that’s not how elections are supposed to work… When you look at a country where 39% of Americans now believe this last election was rigged, that’s a real problem for confidence in the integrity of our electoral system.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, “Sean Hannity 12-7-20 – Breaking Fox News December 7, 2020,” dailymotion.com, December 7, 2020 |
| 67. | 12/7/2020 “The Pennsylvania constitution has very explicit limits on voting, and in most circumstances requires in-person voting. The Pennsylvania legislature this spring passed a law that violates the express terms of the constitution that’s set up the stage for mail-in voting. Which, as you know, there’s been a long pattern, mail-in voting is much more susceptible to fraud, much more susceptible to irresponsible partisan operatives trying to steal votes.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, “Sean Hannity 12-7-20 – Breaking Fox News December 7, 2020,” dailymotion.com, December 7, 2020 |
| 68. | 12/7/2020 “Because of the importance of the legal issues presented, I’ve publicly urged #SCOTUS to hear the case brought by Congressman Mike Kelly, congressional candidate Sean Parnell & state rep. candidate Wanda Logan challenging the constitutionality of the POTUS election results in PA.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, December 7, 2020 4:44 pm |
| 69. | 12/8/2020 “I’m disappointed that the Court decided not to hear the case challenging the election results in Pennsylvania. The anger and division we see across the Nation needs resolution. Late last year, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law that purported to allow universal mail-in voting, notwithstanding the Pennsylvania Constitution’s express prohibition. This appeal filed raised important and serious legal issues, and I believe the Court had a responsibility to ensure our elections follow the law and the Constitution.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, December 8, 2020 8:26 pm |
| 70. | 1/2/2021 “calling for a fair, credible audit of claims of serious election fraud is DEFENDING the integrity of our democracy” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, January 2, 2021 7:34 pm |
| 71. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 72. | 1/3/2021 “Reuters/Ipsos polling shows 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That level of distrust in our democratic processes should be deeply troubling to everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, January 3, 2021 1:48 pm |
| 73. | 1/3/2021 “We’ve seen in the last two months unprecedented allegations of voter fraud. And that’s produced a deep, deep distrust of our democratic process across the country… There’s a lot of people in the states and state legislatures who expressed deep, deep concerns about the unlawful practices that we saw on Election Day, that we saw particularly in cities controlled by Democratic politicians: shutting down the vote, throwing out observers, disregarding the law.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, video via David Krayden, “Ted Cruz On Election Audit: Dismissing Election Fraud Claims ‘Does Real Violence To Our Democratic System,’” dailycaller.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 74. | 1/3/2021 “Look, we got to vote on January 6th on certification and every member of Congress faces a dilemma. Frankly, two pretty lousy choices: one, we can vote to certify by not considering any objection. If we do that that will be heard by a lot of Americans as saying, ‘We don’t think voter fraud is a real concern. We don’t think these claims should be investigated thoroughly.’ I know that’s not what most of us believe. But, secondly, almost all of us don’t want to be in a position where we’re suggesting setting aside the results of an election just because the candidate we supported didn’t happen to prevail. That’s not a principled constitutional position.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, video via David Krayden, “Ted Cruz On Election Audit: Dismissing Election Fraud Claims ‘Does Real Violence To Our Democratic System,’” dailycaller.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 75. | 1/3/2021 “Thirty-nine percent of Americans think, quote, ‘the election was rigged’… that’s bad for our democracy. That’s bad for the legitimacy of any subsequent presidential election. So dismissing these claims, I think, does real violence to our democratic system.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, video via David Krayden, “Ted Cruz On Election Audit: Dismissing Election Fraud Claims ‘Does Real Violence To Our Democratic System,’” dailycaller.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 76. | 1/5/2021 “We have an obligation, I believe, to protect the integrity of the election and to protect the integrity of the democratic system. And so last week, as you know, what I did is work to bring together a group of 11 senators. I spent about 24 hours just working the phones, calling my colleagues, and ultimately 10 of my colleagues joined with me. I intend to object [to certifying electoral votes from disputed states] tomorrow. All 11 senators are standing with me in that objection. And what the objection is for is to demand that we form an Electoral Commission that has the authority to investigate these claims of voter fraud, to consider the evidence, and to make determinations. These allegations are serious, and I’ve got to say there are far too many people in Washington who are saying, ‘Dismiss the claims out of hand don’t look at them, don’t consider them.’ That Congress has to have a blindfold on. I don’t think that’s right. I think we have an obligation to the Constitution to defend the rule of law.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, video via Ted Cruz Press Office, “Sen. Cruz: We Have an Obligation To Protect the Integrity of the Election,” cruz.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 77. | 1/5/2021 “We have an obligation to the country. You look at polling right now that shows that 39 percent of Americans believe the election was rigged. That’s heartbreaking [and] that is in an enormous threat to the legitimacy of subsequent administrations. I think even if you’re a member of Congress who doesn’t necessarily believe that, I think those numbers should dismay you mightily. I think it’s in everyone’s interest for there to be a credible forum that is impartial, that has credibility, that can consider the evidence. What I’m calling for is an emergency 10 day audit. Just audit the results, consider the claims, look at the evidence. By doing it in 10 days we can complete it before January 20, before the presidential inauguration. I think that would help provide much greater faith and confidence in the election than simply charging forward and saying ‘Whatever the results are, whatever the fraud was, we’re going to certify anyway.’ I hope Congress doesn’t do that. But right now, based on the public statements, it sure seems that’s the direction the votes are going.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, video via Ted Cruz Press Office, “Sen. Cruz: We Have an Obligation To Protect the Integrity of the Election,” cruz.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 78. | 1/5/2021 “If a member of Congress votes against an objection [to certifying election results], what an awful lot of voters are going to hear from that is that you don’t think voter fraud is real. That it’s serious. You don’t think that it occurred in this election. That’s obviously not right. And I’ve got to say most at least of the Republicans don’t believe that.” -Ted Cruz in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, video via Ted Cruz Press Office, “Sen. Cruz: We Have an Obligation To Protect the Integrity of the Election,” cruz.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 79. | 1/5/2021 “Tomorrow is an important day. We have an obligation to protect the integrity of the election & our democratic system. That’s why 10 of my colleagues & I are calling for an Electoral Commission to conduct an emergency 10-day audit to examine voter fraud allegations.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, January 5, 2021 11:25 pm |
| 80. | 1/6/2021 “We, a Member of the House of Representatives and a United States Senator, object to the counting of the electoral votes of the State of Arizona on the ground that they were not, under all of the known circumstances, regularly given.” -Ted Cruz and Paul Gosar, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 81. | 1/6/2021 “Today, 10 of my colleagues and I will stand up and speak out to fulfill our obligation to the voters and the U.S. Constitution to protect the integrity of the election and to protect the integrity of our democratic system [by objecting to the certification of electoral votes in some states].” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 11:19 am |
| 82. | 1/6/2021 “There is an alarming 39% of Americans who think the 2020 presidential election was rigged. That’s extremely concerning and why my colleagues and I are calling for a 10-day emergency audit to resolve serious allegations of voter fraud.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 12:59 pm |
| 83. | 1/6/2021 “My colleagues and I are taking a stand to protect the integrity of our democratic process & the integrity of the election by calling for an Electoral Commission to conduct an emergency audit that examines serious allegations of voter fraud.” -Ted Cruz, Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 2:00 pm |
| 84. | 1/6/2021 “I would urge to both sides perhaps a bit less certitude, and a bit more recognition that we are gathered at a time when democracy is in crisis. Recent polling shows that 39% of Americans believe the election that just occurred, ‘was rigged.’ You may not agree with that assessment. But it is nonetheless a reality for nearly half the country. I would note it is not just Republicans who believe that. 31% of Independents agree with that statement. 17% of Democrats believe the election was rigged. Even if you do not share that conviction, it is the responsibility, I believe of this office to acknowledge that as a profound threat to this country and to the legitimacy of any administrations that will come in the future.” -Ted Cruz, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 85. | 1/6/2021 “What does it say to the nearly half the country that believes this election was rigged if we vote not even to consider the claims of illegality and fraud in this election? […] Let me be clear. This objection is for the State of Arizona, but it is broader than that. It is an objection for all six of the contested States to have a credible, objective, impartial body hear the evidence and make a conclusive determination. That would benefit both sides. That would improve the legitimacy of this election.” -Ted Cruz, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 86. | 1/7/2021 “Millions of Americans who have peacefully expressed their deep concerns regarding election integrity deserve to have their voices heard. It was the right thing to do. I very much wish Congress had not set aside these concerns, but I respect the position each of my colleagues took.” -Ted Cruz, “Sen. Cruz Issues Statement on Electoral College Certification Process, Calls for Peaceful and Orderly Transition of Power,” cruz.senate.gov, January 7, 2021 |
| 10. SENATOR STEVE DAINES (R-MT) | |
|---|---|
| 87. | 11/7/2020 “Dems are stealing the election. Trump needs our support. Give $5 & help us fight back now!” -Steve Daines via Chad Sokol, “Daines campaign claims ‘Dems are stealing the election,’” dailyinterlake.com, November 7, 2020 |
| 88. | 1/2/2021 “An unprecedented number of Americans have significant doubts about the integrity of 2020 presidential election results. Fewer than 45,000 votes spread across three states would alter the vote of the Electoral College. Couple that with the fact that the processes and the way Americans voted was altered at a scale never before imagined outside what the state legislative process intended. There have been continued reports of irregularities with signature verification, different rules for mail-in ballots versus in-person ballots, delayed receipt of ballots, inconsistent curing of ballots, a lack of meaningful access to the polls, the dispute process and counting process for partisan poll watchers. These issues have cast doubt on the legitimacy of the presidential election outcome which needs further investigation for the credibility of our institutions.” -Steve Daines, “Daines Calls for Election Commission to Restore Trust Following Irregularities in 2020 Presidential Election,” daines.senate.gov, January 2, 2021 |
| 89. | 1/2/2021 “To restore confidence for Montanans and the American people, I am joining a group of senators to propose an election commission to quickly audit the election results. Senators have raised concerns following previous elections before. They debated the issues and as a result created a path towards reforms that were made for future elections. Furthermore, I believe it is important that we agree to hear the concerns of Americans, and that’s why I believe it’s important that we form the electoral commission. To answer the questions outstanding, find resolution and protect the democratic process. Once completed, individual contested states would evaluate the commission’s findings, and if necessary could convene special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed. The commission provides a needed path to resolution before the January 20th inauguration.” -Steve Daines, “Daines Calls for Election Commission to Restore Trust Following Irregularities in 2020 Presidential Election,” daines.senate.gov, January 2, 2021 |
| 90. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 11. SENATOR DEB FISCHER (R-NE) | |
|---|---|
| 91. | 1/5/2021 “Like many Nebraskans, I voted for Donald Trump – twice. I campaigned for him and worked closely with him on many significant accomplishments that have made our country more secure and more prosperous. I also share the concern of many Nebraskans about potential voting irregularities. Should there be investigations? Yes. Should states do more to secure their election procedures? Yes. We must have greater confidence that our elections are secure.” -Deb Fischer, “I Will Uphold My Oath,” fischer.senate.gov, January 5, 2021 |
| 12. SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC) | |
|---|---|
| 92. | 11/5/2020 “There’s the process of observing elections that’s being violated. Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake. Why are they shutting people [poll watchers] out? Because they don’t want people to see what they’re doing. But you’re talking about a lot of dead people voting, you’re talking about in Nevada people voting who are not legal residents.” -Lindsey Graham, “Graham announces $500G donation to Trump campaign legal efforts, calls Philly elections ‘crooked as a snake,’” foxnews.com, November 5, 2020 |
| 93. | 11/5/2020 “I’m here tonight to stand with President Trump… I’m going to donate $500,000 tonight to President Trump’s legal fund… so we’ll have the resources to fight. The allegations of wrongdoing [in the 2020 election] are earth shattering… I don’t trust Philadelphia, I don’t trust what’s going on in Nevada.” -Lindsey Graham, “Graham announces $500G donation to Trump campaign legal efforts, calls Philly elections ‘crooked as a snake,’” foxnews.com, November 5, 2020 |
| 94. | 11/7/2020 “I will be calling on the Department of Justice to investigate these claims [by Richard Hopkins that USPS supervisors tampered with mail-in ballots]. I’ll also be in contact with the Postmaster General, requesting he to look into these allegations, ones that may follow, and help secure the testimony of Mr. Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins is entitled to all whistleblower protections, and I will ensure they extend to other postal workers who may come forward with claims of irregulates [sic], misconduct, fraud, etc. The expanded use of mail-in voting is making the post office the administrator of elections, not the local election officials. This change in mission requires there to be further scrutiny to ensure the system is beyond reproach.” -Lindsey Graham, “Statements released by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R), Rep. Jeff Duncan (R) and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D), all of SC, after Joe Biden projected as the President-Elect,” foxcarolina.com, November 7, 2020 |
| 95. | 11/7/2020 “It is imperative that all credible allegations of voting irregularities and misconduct be investigated to ensure the integrity of the 2020 elections. The presidential election remains close in multiple states, and as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, all credible allegations of voting irregularities and misconduct will be taken seriously. I will not allow credible allegations of voting irregularities or misconduct to be swept under the rug.” -Lindsey Graham, “Statements released by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R), Rep. Jeff Duncan (R) and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D), all of SC, after Joe Biden projected as the President-Elect,” foxcarolina.com, November 7, 2020 |
| 96. | 11/7/2020 “Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada– I think you’re going to see in the next 48 hours real evidence of systematic voting irregularities. Democracy depends upon fair elections. President Trump’s team is going to have a chance to make a case regarding voting irregularities. They deserve a chance to make that case. I’m going to stand with President Trump.” -Lindsey Graham, “’I’m going to stand with the president’ -Graham,” finance.yahoo.com, November 7, 2020 |
| 97. | 11/8/2020 “This is a contested election… The Trump team has canvassed all early voters and absentee ballots in Pennsylvania, and they found over 100 people they think were dead, but 15 people that we verified to have been dead who voted. Here’s the one that gets me: six people registered after they died and voted.” -Lindsey Graham via Ronn Blitzer, “Graham: If GOP doesn’t fight, there will ‘never be another Republican president elected again,’” foxnews.com, November 8, 2020 |
| 98. | 11/8/2020 “There are allegations of system failure, fraud… these computers in Michigan do not pass the smell test… I want Pennsylvania to explain to the American people how six people after they die can register and vote in Pennsylvania. I want the computer system in Michigan that flipped votes from Republicans to Democrats to be looked at. And the software was used all over the country. There’s a lot of shenanigans going on.” -Lindsey Graham via Ronn Blitzer, “Graham: If GOP doesn’t fight, there will ‘never be another Republican president elected again,’” foxnews.com, November 8, 2020 |
| 99. | 11/8/2020 “I know we’ve got evidence of dead people voting in Pennsylvania. I know we have evidence of computers flipping Republican votes to Democratic votes. There’s a lot of things being alleged out there that need to be looked at… Do not accept the media’s declaration of Biden. Fight back.” -Lindsey Graham via Ronn Blitzer, “Graham: If GOP doesn’t fight, there will ‘never be another Republican president elected again,’” foxnews.com, November 8, 2020 |
| 100. | 11/8/2020 “The post office is the new election center. It’s the wild, wild west when it comes to mail-in balloting, everything we worried about has come true.” -Lindsey Graham via Ronn Blitzer, “Graham: If GOP doesn’t fight, there will ‘never be another Republican president elected again,’” foxnews.com, November 8, 2020 |
| 101. | 11/9/2020 “The state of play in America in 2020 for Republicans is not good. We need to fight back. We win because of our ideas. We lose elections because they [Democrats] cheat us.” -Lindsey Graham via Charles Creitz, “Lindsey Graham: Democrats ‘could give a damn’ about election law and precedent, so long as Trump lost,” foxnews.com, November 9, 2020 |
| 102. | 11/9/2020 “We’re now finding, potentially, that 25,000 nursing home residents in different nursing homes, requested mail-in ballots at the exact same time. You can’t ballot harvest in Pennsylvania. What are the odds that 25,000 people in different locations of the same age group requested at the same time a ballot? Somebody is up to no good in these nursing homes… If we don’t deal with voting by mail in 2020, we’ll [Republicans] never win the White House again.” -Lindsey Graham via Charles Creitz, “Lindsey Graham: Democrats ‘could give a damn’ about election law and precedent, so long as Trump lost,” foxnews.com, November 9, 2020 |
| 103. | 11/9/2020 “To me, if you have a law to make sure that election counting is observed by both parties and you can’t do it, the remedy is to take those ballots off the table that were not allowed to be observed. If you have a signature requirement and it wasn’t followed, the remedy is to make sure those ballots collected are not counted. It’s pretty obvious. If the legislative body passes a law, are we going to allow a handful of people at the polling site to undo it? Does the law really matter if a handful of individuals on their own can take it into their own hands? Is it OK for people at polling sites to rewrite the law so that Republicans can’t watch? Is it okay to ignore the signature requirement which is there to protect the integrity of the ballot?” -Lindsey Graham via Charles Creitz, “Lindsey Graham: Democrats ‘could give a damn’ about election law and precedent, so long as Trump lost,” foxnews.com, November 9, 2020 |
| 104. | 11/17/2020 “Here’s what I’m begging the Trump campaign to do. Challenge— get some judge to go look at the [mail-in ballot] envelopes with signatures, and match them against the database with somebody that knows what the hell they’re doing, in front of Republicans and Democrats, so we can verify that mail-in voting in Georgia is not fraudulent. When you have a single person verifying a signature, it’s not bipartisan… All I can say is, on election night, votes came out of nowhere for Biden. Thousands showed up late in the night on election night for Biden. Weeks and weeks later, we’re finding votes for Trump… Voting by mail will be the end of the Republican party if we don’t have a system to verify signatures.” -Lindsey Graham in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, “Sean Hannity 11-17-20 – The Sean Hannity Show November 17, 2020,” dailymotion.com, November 17, 2020 |
| 105. | 11/17/2020 “As a United States senator who is worried about the integrity of the election process nationally, when it comes to vote by mail… What I’m trying to find out is how you verify mail-in ballots. The question I have is who verifies the signature. And if it’s a single individual, I don’t like that idea. I think it should be bipartisan. What I’m trying to do is say we want bipartisan observers when it comes to counting the votes and all that good stuff.” -Lindsey Graham via Christal Hayes, Lindsey Graham says he’s spoken with multiple battleground state officials about ballot counting,” usatoday.com, November 17, 2020 |
| 106. | 11/21/2020 “I could not agree more with Governor @BrianKempGA that it would be appropriate to audit mail-in ballot signatures against a valid database… The rejection rate for signatures in the 2020 race was significantly less than in past elections. A signature audit is necessary given how the Consent Decree affected mail in voting.” -Lindsey Graham Twitter.com, November 21, 2020 10:48 am |
| 107. | 11/30/2020 “He’s [Trump] gonna fight for every vote and push systems to get better, and I said, ‘Keep it up.’ I think he’s focused on the challenges he has and trying to, you know, deal with mail-in voting and I’m very worried about it too myself quite frankly.” -Lindsey Graham via Manu Raju, “GOP senators’ strategy on Trump’s election fraud claims: Keep quiet and carry on,” cnn.com, December 1, 2020 |
| 108. | 12/3/2020 “The president is going to challenge [election] systems that he thinks failed. He’s going to fight for every vote in all these swing states, and I would encourage him to do so… He’s going to go to Georgia Saturday, he’s going to talk about election abuses that are real in Georgia… The signature verification system in Georgia is inadequate… This president deserves the system to respond to legitimate complaints. I am convinced that the signature verification system used on election day for mail-in ballots in Georgia was insufficient, that if you audited the signatures you would find a great disparity.” -Lindsey Graham in an interview with John Roberts on Fox News, video via The Daily Briefing on Facebook.com, December 3, 2020 6:21 pm |
| 109. | 12/3/2020 John Roberts: “What do you think of what the president said that [Attorney General] Bill Barr has, in his estimation, not looked deeply enough at the problem [of election fraud]?” “Well, they have been looking, I know that. As a matter of fact, I sent an affidavit over signed by the gentleman in Pennsylvania — I think it was Pennsylvania — about backdating ballots. I know that the Department of Justice and the Post Office people actually talked to that individual.” -Lindsey Graham in an interview with John Roberts on Fox News, video via The Daily Briefing on Facebook.com, December 3, 2020 6:21 pm |
| 110. | 12/7/2020 “President Trump, I think, got screwed over with the mail-in voting system in Georgia. The audit would find out one way or the other. If you don’t audit the signatures in the presidential race, I have no confidence in the outcome [of the election]… There’s a civil war brewing in Georgia for no good reason. It’s not unreasonable to ask the legislature to come back in and order an audit of the signatures in the presidential race to see if the system worked. It’s not unreasonable to change the law while you can, so Stacey Abrams doesn’t steal another election.” -Lindsey Graham in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, “Sean Hannity 12-7-20 – Breaking Fox News December 7, 2020,” dailymotion.com, December 7, 2020 |
| 111. | 12/7/2020 “Must have audit of mail-in ballot signatures to have confidence in the presidential election outcome in Georgia! Only way to have an audit of signatures is for the GA Secretary of State to change his mind or special session of the legislature conferring power to create audit of signatures. Special session also could address problems associated with mail-in ballots before Senate runoff.” -Lindsey Graham, Twitter.com, December 7, 2020 1:42 pm |
| 112. | 12/11/2020 “Proud of South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson for supporting Texas lawsuit challenging integrity of the 2020 election in various states. This is the first time systems have been challenged and will, at a minimum, improve our election process and promote ballot security. Fight for every legal vote and disqualify improper votes. It’s the right thing to do!” -Lindsey Graham, Facebook.com, December 11, 2020 11:36 am |
| 13. SENATOR CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA) | |
|---|---|
| 113. | 1/6/2021 “I share the frustration of many Americans about the election outcome, and I’m also concerned about claims of irregularities that were exacerbated by states changing their rules at the eleventh hour. Going forward, it’s important that state legislatures closely scrutinize the events of this election and take necessary steps to promote independence, transparency and trust in future elections.” -Chuck Grassley, “Grassley Statement On Electoral College Certification,” grassley.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 14. SENATOR BILL HAGERTY (R-TN) | |
|---|---|
| 114. | 10/28/2020 “@Twitter should be held accountable for election interference.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, October 28, 2020 2:49 pm |
| 115. | 11/5/2020 “We can all agree that every vote that was cast legally should be counted. But I hope that these remaining states that are counting don’t shift from counting ballots to casting ballots.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 7:08 pm |
| 116. | 11/5/2020 “We must protect the sanctity of the ballot box. That means every LEGAL vote must be counted. We can’t allow bad actors to harm our election system. Support President @realDonaldTrump’s defense team” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 8:29 pm |
| 117. | 11/6/2020 “I agree with President Trump, we must protect the sanctity of the ballot box. That means every vote legally cast must be counted. We can’t allow a lack of transparency to harm our election system. America is the greatest nation in the world, and our citizens should have faith in our electoral process. The lack of transparency and irregularities that we’ve seen are a cause of great concern.” -Bill Hagerty, “Bill Hagerty’s Statement on the Presidential Election Results,” teamhagerty.com, November 6, 2020 |
| 118. | 11/6/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump and his team are working to ensure a fair and transparent election. We must stop bad actors from interfering with the election system.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 11:31 am |
| 119. | 11/6/2020 “I agree with President @realDonaldTrump. Every legally cast vote must be counted. I contributed to @TeamTrump’s legal fund.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 5:08 pm |
| 120. | 11/6/2020 “I contributed to @realDonaldTrump’s legal fund to make sure every legally cast ballot is counted. Pass it on!” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 8:12 pm |
| 121. | 11/7/2020 “Count The Votes That Were Legally Cast! I contributed to @realDonaldTrump’s legal fund because it is our American right to have a transparent and fair election.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 7, 2020 4:05 pm |
| 122. | 11/7/2020 “I contributed to @realDonaldTrump’s legal fund to ensure every legally cast vote is counted, and if you’re able, I hope you will too.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 7, 2020 11:46 am |
| 123. | 11/7/2020 “Ensuring the integrity of our election should not be controversial. It’s important that every legally cast vote is counted.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 7, 2020 5:43 pm |
| 124. | 11/7/2020 “I agree with President @realDonaldTrump – count every legally cast vote. RT if you agree too!” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 7, 2020 7:07 pm |
| 125. | 11/8/2020 “We will not stop fighting alongside President @realDonaldTrump to ensure every legally cast vote is counted.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 8, 2020 1:01 pm |
| 126. | 11/8/2020 “It should not be controversial to demand a transparent and fair election. It is our right as Americans.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 8, 2020 5:04 pm |
| 127. | 11/8/2020 “We must protect the integrity of the #Election2020. I contributed to @TeamTrump’s legal fund. I agree with President @realDonaldTrump, we must count every legally cast vote.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 8, 2020 11:16 pm |
| 128. | 11/9/2020 “It’s what we’ve been saying all along. LEGAL votes should be counted, illegal votes should not. That’s the foundation of our democracy.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 9, 2020 10:27 pm |
| 129. | 11/10/2020 “The integrity of the #Election2020 is at stake, that’s why I contributed to President @realDonaldTrump’s legal fund to ensure every legally cast vote is counted.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 10, 2020 2:01 pm |
| 130. | 11/10/2020 “We must count every LEGALLY cast vote.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 10, 2020 7:34 pm |
| 131. | 11/11/2020 “We must protect the integrity of our election. That’s why I contributed to President @realDonaldTrump’s legal fund. -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 11, 2020 1:59 pm |
| 132. | 11/11/2020 “Count the legally cast votes.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 11, 2020 7:44 pm |
| 133. | 11/12/2020 “I stand with President @realDonaldTrump, which is why I contributed to the @TeamTrump legal fund. The integrity of our election is on the line.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 12, 2020 6:06 pm |
| 134. | 11/12/2020 “I agree with President @realDonaldTrump. We need to ensure the integrity of the #Election2020 and count the legally cast votes. -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 12, 2020 2:14 pm |
| 135. | 11/12/2020 “The Presidential election is not over until all the legally cast votes are counted. President @realDonaldTrump is well within his rights to look into the irregularities happening across America in the #Election2020.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 12, 2020 3:00 pm |
| 136. | 11/13/2020 “How are we going to save America? 1. We must stand with @realDonaldTrump and ensure that every legally cast vote is counted” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 13, 2020 2:01 pm |
| 137. | 11/13/2020 “We will not give up on the integrity of the #Election2020. We must continue to ensure that every legally cast vote is counted.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 13, 2020 7:43 pm |
| 138. | 11/14/2020 “Americans want a fair and transparent election across America. We stand with President @realDonaldTrump – count the legally cast votes.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 14, 2020 2:23 pm |
| 139. | 11/14/2020 “The Presidential election is not over. President @realDonaldTrump is absolutely right to ensure every legally cast vote is counted.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 14, 2020 6:51 pm |
| 140. | 11/14/2020 “I stand with President @realDonaldTrump. We must count every legally cast vote. This election is far from over. RT if you agree.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 14, 2020 9:12 pm |
| 141. | 11/15/2020 “I support our President @realDonaldTrump. He is absolutely right to look into the irregularities happening across America in the #Election2020.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 15, 2020 7:59 pm |
| 142. | 11/16/2020 “I agree with President @realDonaldTrump. This election is not over yet – we must count every legally cast vote. As Americans, it’s critical that we maintain the sanctity of the ballot box. Every vote legally cast should be counted. Any vote illegally cast should not. I stand with President Trump as he looks into the irregularities surrounding this election. Our nation is the greatest in the world, and our citizens are entitled to have complete confidence in the electoral process. I’ve contributed to President Trump’s legal defense fund, and I encourage you to do the same.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 16, 2020 5:48 pm |
| 143. | 11/17/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is well within his rights to investigate the irregularities in the #Election2020. We must ensure every legally cast vote is counted.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 17, 2020 3:01 pm |
| 144. | 11/18/2020 “The irregularities in the #Election2020 need to be investigated. I stand by President @realDonaldTrump all the way.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 15, 2020 1:23 pm |
| 145. | 11/19/2020 “.@GOPChairwoman continues to stand with Pres. @realDonaldTrump – highlighting voting irregularities across the nation. I can’t think of anyone better than her to lead as we continue to protect America’s confidence in our electoral system & defend @GOP Senate Majority.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 19, 2020 12:19 pm |
| 146. | 11/19/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is well within his rights to investigate the irregularities happening in the #Election2020 across the nation. This should not be controversial.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 15, 2020 5:29 pm |
| 147. | 11/21/2020 “Americans deserve a fair and transparent #Election2020. President @realDonaldTrump and @TeamTrump are well within their rights to investigate the irregularities across the nation.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 21, 2020 5:44 pm |
| 148. | 11/23/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is well within his rights to investigate the irregularities of the #Election2020.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 19, 2020 4:57 pm |
| 149. | 11/24/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is well within his rights to investigate the irregularities in the #Election2020. The integrity of our elections is critical.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 24, 2020 11:16 am |
| 150. | 11/25/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is well within his rights to investigate the irregularities of the #Election2020. RT if you agree.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 25, 2020 8:31 pm |
| 151. | 11/29/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is investigating the irregularities of the #Election2020, and he is well within his rights to do so.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 29, 2020 7:54 pm |
| 152. | 11/30/2020 “I stand with President @realDonaldTrump, and appreciate his efforts to challenge the irregularities of the #Election2020.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, November 25, 2020 7:04 pm |
| 153. | 12/2/2020 “The #Election2020 isn’t over yet. President @realDonaldTrump has many open investigations challenging the irregularities across the country.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, December 2, 2020 3:02 pm |
| 154. | 12/5/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is rightfully continuing his investigations into the irregularities in the #Election2020 across America.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, December 5, 2020 11:43 am |
| 155. | 12/8/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is continuing to investigate the irregularities across America in the #Election2020. Tennesseans stand with him all the way.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, December 8, 2020 6:23 pm |
| 156. | 12/9/2020 “While President @realDonaldTrump continues to fight to protect the sanctity of the ballot box, I completely support TN joining TX in their fight against these states for violating voting guidelines in the Constitution. We must ensure every legally cast ballot is counted.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, December 9, 2020 4:48 pm |
| 157. | 1/2/2021 “Tennesseans elected us as their United States Senators to represent their views and values in Washington and to always fight for them, which is why we have concluded without any reservation that we will stand against tainted electoral results from the recent Presidential election. We know that our elections, built around the Electoral College which is a fundamental element, are the envy of the world. Protecting their integrity and ensuring the results are free and fair are critical to maintaining the trust of our own citizens. Since November 3, hardworking men and women from across Tennessee have contacted us to justifiably express anger and concern that some states conducted the recent election in a manner that did not respect the rule of law and may have violated many of their state constitutions as well as Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Many are concerned about the sanctity of the one person one vote guarantee.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “RELEASE: Blackburn, Hagerty To Oppose The Certification Of The Electoral College Vote,” marshablackburn.com, January 2, 2021 |
| 158. | 1/2/2021 “On behalf of Tennesseans, we are taking a united stand against the tainted electoral results from the recent Presidential election. American democracy relies on the consent of the governed. Allegations of voter fraud, irregularities and unconstitutional actions diminish public confidence in what should be a free, fair and transparent process. Protecting the integrity of the electoral process is paramount to preserving trust and legitimacy in the final outcome. For critical moments like these, the Constitution reserves the right to challenge the Electoral College results to members of Congress. On January 6, we will vote to oppose certification of the 2020 election results.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “RELEASE: Blackburn, Hagerty To Oppose The Certification Of The Electoral College Vote,” marshablackburn.com, January 2, 2021 |
| 159. | 1/3/2021 “Millions of Tennesseans and Americans are concerned about the sanctity of the one person, one vote guarantee. Despite the constant drumbeat that it’s time to move on, they know the rules of the game were changed while the game was still being played. It is our responsibility as their Senators to fight for their concerns. We cannot ignore what happened in this presidential election. Several states conducted their elections in a way that undermines the constitutional framework that has made our elections the envy of the world. And because of their tactics, Tennesseans lack confidence in the results, and our nation may be deprived of President Trump’s bold leadership.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “Blackburn & Hagerty: Protecting the Sanctity and Value of Each American’s Vote,” breitbart.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 160. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 161. | 1/3/2021 “More than 74 million Americans who voted for President Donald Trump have justifiably lost confidence in the electoral system because election laws in decisive battleground states were ignored or altered outside of the legislative process. Tennesseans elected us to fight for their views and values in Washington, which certainly means upholding the rule of law, and we plan to exercise our constitutionally prescribed role of reviewing the electoral college results to ensure that those voices we represent are heard.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “Blackburn & Hagerty: Protecting the Sanctity and Value of Each American’s Vote,” breitbart.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 162. | 1/3/2021 “Understandably, Americans are questioning the results of an election in which the laws designed to ensure fair and secure voting were rewritten at the last minute by unaccountable bureaucrats who had no authority to do so. The Electoral College is an essential element of our republic, and each American deserves to have complete confidence in our country’s election results. That’s why we are opposing the unconstitutional, unreliable election processes. We must protect the sanctity of the ballot box because if we ignore these issues now, then nothing will change and the trust in future elections — the bedrock of our representative form of government — will be shaken forever.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “Blackburn & Hagerty: Protecting the Sanctity and Value of Each American’s Vote,” breitbart.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 163. | 1/3/2021 “At the eleventh-hour this year, the radical Left, unelected bureaucrats, and special interest groups in several key states used the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to improperly rewrite or ignore election laws, which led to universal mail-in ballots and other less secure methods of voting, which overwhelmed the election system and prevented adequate oversight of the new processes. As a result, ballots were less scrutinized and vote counting was chaotic, haphazard, and often-unobserved. Then, once the vote-counting began, all of the ballots were mixed together, nullifying any attempt to audit the results appropriately. This is the outcome that the activists and special interest groups wanted — change the rules in a way that is impossible to unwind.” -Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, “Blackburn & Hagerty: Protecting the Sanctity and Value of Each American’s Vote,” breitbart.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 164. | 1/3/2021 “It’s critical we stand for the US Constitution and protect the sanctity of the ballot box. That’s why @VoteMarsha and I are exercising our constitutional duty in opposing Electoral College certification. We must restore trust and confidence in our election system.” -Bill Hagerty, Facebook.com, January 3, 2021 4:50 pm |
| 165. | 1/4/2021 “Each American deserves to have complete confidence in our country’s election results. That’s why Senator @VoteMarsha and I are opposing the unconstitutional election processes of the 2020 Presidential election.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, January 4, 2021 2:12 pm |
| 166. | 1/4/2021 “This week, Senator @VoteMarsha and I are opposing the unconstitutional election processes of the 2020 Presidential election. We hear you, Tennessee, and we will do everything in our power to stand up for Pres. @realDonaldTrump and a fair election process.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, January 4, 2021 9:31 pm |
| 167. | 1/6/2021 “Senator @VoteMarsha and I are opposing the unconstitutional procedures used by key states in the election. We must protect the sanctity of American democracy.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 11:01 am |
| 168. | 1/6/2021 “We can’t ignore the unconstitutional procedures used in the 2020 presidential election or nothing will change. Senator @VoteMarsha and I are fighting for your voice and vote.” -Bill Hagerty, Twitter.com, January 6, 2021 12:32 pm |
| 169. | 1/6/2021 “We had activists come in and change the rules of the election mid-game. These weren’t state legislators, these were activist judges, these were executive branch commission officials. This is the domain of state legislators, this needs to be cleaned up. And that’s why we’re proposing a commission to do just that.” -Bill Hagerty via WMC Action News 5 Staff, “Sen. Bill Hagerty discusses Electoral College certification,” wmcactionnews5.com, January 6, 2021 |
| 170. | 3/2/2021 “The Constitution rightly commits the authority of state elections to state legislatures, not Congress, but Congress must protect the Electoral College and should not subsidize an unconstitutional process in which state election laws are trampled on, like we saw in some states in 2020.” -Bill Hagerty, “Hagerty, Rubio, Cramer Introduce Bill to Strengthen Election Integrity,” hagerty.senate.gov, March 2, 2021 |
| 171. | 3/2/2021 “Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution is clear that elected, accountable state legislatures—not activist judges, not election officials or commissions, not lawsuit settlements—have sole responsibility for setting the rules in their states. Yet, in several battleground states in the 2020 election, non-legislative actors changed the election rules in the middle of the game, despite having no constitutional authority to do so.” -Bill Hagerty, “Hagerty, Rubio, Cramer Introduce Bill to Strengthen Election Integrity,” hagerty.senate.gov, March 2, 2021 |
| 172. | 3/2/2021 “When this legislation [H.R. 1] to upend our election system was appropriately not considered by the U.S. Senate, the effort moved to the states ahead of the 2020 election. In select states, activists used the pandemic as the excuse to file lawsuits and cajole election officials and – with the help of activist judges and partisan officials – to unconstitutionally rewrite and water down state election integrity laws in the middle of the election. They did so often by ignoring the role of state legislatures, in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution. This led to less secure methods of voting that overwhelmed the system, invited wrongdoing, and prevented adequate oversight of the new processes. It led to Americans justifiably questioning the integrity of our elections, an outcome that is not acceptable.” -Bill Hagerty, “Sen. Bill Hagerty: Protect voters, elections – this bill will restore trust in our Electoral College process,” foxnews.com, March 2, 2021 |
| 173. | 3/2/2021 “My purpose is not to put Congress in charge of state elections. That’s the opposite of what I want. The Constitution rightly commits this authority to the state legislatures. But we must protect the Electoral College, which cannot function properly if the constitutional process for setting election rules is trampled on, as it was in the 2020 election… While some say we should simply move on, if we ignore this as if the 2020 election was normal, we risk disenfranchising the American voter. If we do nothing, then nothing will change, and we increase the odds this will happen again.” -Bill Hagerty, “Sen. Bill Hagerty: Protect voters, elections – this bill will restore trust in our Electoral College process,” foxnews.com, March 2, 2021 |
| 174. | 3/10/2021 “I think what they’re going to find is that in several instances, the laws were changed midterm— as the [2020] elections were underway— unconstitutional actors stepped in, violated the United States Constitution and took away the Constitutionally-granted authority that solely lies within the realm of state legislators. You had actors in the judiciary, you had actors in the executive branch, you had unelected commissions that basically stepped in and changed the rules midstream and they’ve shaken America’s confidence in the election system to the very core.” -Bill Hagerty, “ICYMI— Hagerty Joins Mornings with Maria to discuss H.R.1, Protecting Election Integrity,” hagerty.senate.gov, March 10, 2021 |
| 175. | 3/10/2021 “[O]ur legislation would… force an examination of what took place in 2020. To the extent the Constitution was violated, I’m certain we’re going to find this in several states, to the extent there were Constitutional violations, those violations would have to be corrected before a single federal dollar would ever go back to those states to support elections… That’s what this aims to do: to put the right incentives in place, to clean up what happened in 2020, and restore confidence in the American electoral system… What we’ve got to do though… is draw a clear focus on the fact that there were severe issues that arose in 2020.” -Bill Hagerty, “ICYMI— Hagerty Joins Mornings with Maria to discuss H.R.1, Protecting Election Integrity,” hagerty.senate.gov, March 10, 2021 |
| 15. SENATOR JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO) | |
|---|---|
| 176. | 10/15/2020 “It’s basically at this point Big Tech v democracy. These tech companies want to rig an election. They want to control what we read. They want to control journalists in this country. They want to control the news. And we just can’t let them.” -Josh Hawley in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, video via Senator Hawley Press Office, Twitter.com, October 15, 2020 9:41 am |
| 177. | 11/5/2020 “If last 24 hrs have made anything clear, it’s that we need new election integrity laws NOW. Ban ballot harvesting, guarantee poll watcher access, make ballot counting transparent. I will introduce” -Josh Hawley, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 4:28 pm |
| 178. | 11/5/2020 “About to join @TuckerCarlson to discuss the need for election INTEGRITY – and the #BigTech censorship machine” -Josh Hawley, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 8:57 pm |
| 179. | 11/7/2020 “The media do not get to determine who the president is. The people do. When all lawful votes have been counted, recounts finished, and allegations of fraud addressed, we will know who the winner is” -Josh Hawley, Twitter.com, November 7, 2020 2:01 pm |
| 180. | 11/10/2020 “The debacle of the 2020 election has made clear that serious reforms are needed to protect the integrity of our elections. The American people deserve transparency—that means banning ballot harvesting, empowering poll watchers, and taking steps to ensure that all legally cast ballots are accounted for. The confusion and controversy of this past week is not acceptable, Congress must take action.” -Josh Hawley, “Hawley Introduces Bill to Ban Ballot Harvesting, Protect Election Integrity,” hawley.senate.gov, November 10, 2020 |
| 181. | 11/10/2020 “Poll watchers from both parties need to be present as ballots are being counted… Right now, right at this very instant, there needs to be total transparency in this process. And I gotta tell you, when you see some states going to court to try to stop poll watchers, people just observing the ballot counts, that is deeply, deeply disturbing.” -Josh Hawley in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, video via Senator Hawley Press Office, Twitter.com, November 10, 2020 1:29 pm |
| 182. | 11/20/2020 “The debacle of the 2020 election made clear serious reforms are needed to protect our election integrity. Among other reforms, Sen. Hawley’s bill would ban all ballot-harvesting in federal elections & provide incentives for states to ditch the practice.” -Josh Hawley via Senator Hawley Press Office, Twitter.com, November 20, 2020 12:48 pm |
| 183. | 12/1/2020 “This case raises major questions about the legality of Pennsylvania’s mail-in balloting changes. The Supreme Court should hear the case on an emergency basis” [Note: This tweet linked to an article titled, “Lawsuit by Trump allies challenging Pennsylvania election results reaches Supreme Court.”] -Josh Hawley, Twitter.com, December 1, 2020 9:28 pm |
| 184. | 12/2/2020 “The idea that the Democrats are promoting now that before this election has been certified, before the electoral college has even met, while there are important appeals and legal cases ongoing, including the one involving Pennsylvania, that I hope the US Supreme Court will here. Before any of that is decided or over with, they want to fast track Biden’s picks for his cabinet should he become president… The only thing that should be fast tracked is the resolution of these important legal challenges to what happened a couple of weeks ago in the election… This is a case that goes to the heart of the mail-in balloting changes that the Pennsylvania legislature adopted, apparently in contravention of their own state constitution. Potential federal equal protection problems there. I’d certainly hope that the US Supreme Court will take this up.” -Josh Hawley in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, “Hawley: Biden Cabinet picks espouse ‘war forever, America last policy,’” video.foxnews.com, December 2, 2020 |
| 185. | 12/16/2020 “26 states now in this country allow third party ballot harvesting of mail-in votes. That’s where you can pay a third party to go distribute the ballots, and you can’t do this in my home state of Missouri, because we have control similar to those in Ohio that this report was talking about. But in other states, 20 states, you can pay a third party to go distribute the ballots. You can pay a third party to pick up the ballots. There’s no chain of custody there. There’s no verification. This seems to me an invitation to fraud and abuse.” -Josh Hawley, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 186. | 12/16/2020 “We should also make sure that poll watchers from both parties can be present at all times, that there are eyes on ballots, cameras on ballots at all times, that there are signature verification requirements that are mandatory, that there’s mandatory reporting requirements about where we are in the count, where the states are so states can’t go dark for days at a time. All of this stuff ought to be common sense. There is no reason we should just shrug our shoulders and say, ‘Well, fraud happens all the time. No big deal.’ It is a big deal. It’s a very big deal. For millions and millions of Americans in this election, it’s a very, very big deal indeed.” -Josh Hawley, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 187. | 12/16/2020 “Let’s let the process play out. January 6th is when it will come to a conclusion, at least in the United States Congress, and then January 20th will have the swearing-in. Seventy-four million Americans are not just going to shut up and go away, nor should they. They have legitimate, valid concerns [about the 2020 election]. -Josh Hawley, “What did Hawley actually say about the election?,” ksdk.com, January 29, 2021 |
| 188. | 12/17/2020 “Yesterday, I was talking with some of the constituents back at home, group of about 30 people. Every single one of them, every one of them, told me that they felt they had been disenfranchised, their votes didn’t matter, that the election had been rigged. These are normal, reasonable people, these are not crazy people, these are reasonable people… Suffice it to say, I’m not too keen on lectures about how Missourians and others who voted for President Trump and now have some concerns about fraud and about integrity, about compliance with the law, should just be quiet.” -Josh Hawley at a Senate hearing, video via Senator Hawley Press Office, Twitter.com, December 17, 2020 3:45 pm |
| 189. | 12/30/2020 “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. 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. At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections. But Congress has so far failed to act. For these reasons, I will follow the same practice Democrat members of Congress have in years past and object during the certification process on January 6 to raise these critical issues.” -Josh Hawley, “Sen. Hawley Will Object During Electoral College Certification Process On Jan 6,” hawley.senate.gov, December 30, 2020 |
| 190. | 12/30/2020 “Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard. I will object on January 6 on their behalf” -Josh Hawley, Twitter.com, December 30, 2020 11:40 am |
| 191. | 12/30/2020 “Following both the 2004 and 2016 elections, Democrats in Congress objected during the certification of electoral votes in order to raise concerns about election integrity. They were praised by Democratic leadership and the media when they did. And they were entitled to do so. But now those of us concerned about the integrity of this election are entitled to do the same.” -Josh Hawley, “Sen. Hawley Will Object During Electoral College Certification Process On Jan 6,” hawley.senate.gov, December 30, 2020 |
| 192. | 12/31/2020 “Now, when Republicans – 74M Americans – have concerns about election integrity, we’re supposed to just sit down and shut up? I mean, somebody has to stand up here. You’ve got 74 million Americans who feel disenfranchised, who feel like their vote doesn’t matter.” -Josh Hawley in an interview with Fox News, video via Senator Hawley Press Office, Twitter.com, December 31, 2020 2:22 pm |
| 193. | 1/2/2021 “I do speak for my constituents when they raise legitimate concerns about issues as important as the fairness of our elections. For, example, in Pennsylvania: since the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Constitution has required all votes to be cast in person, with narrowly defined exceptions. This fact is widely acknowledged. Pennsylvania courts have ruled on this question multiple times. But last year, the state legislature enacted a new law purporting to permit voting by mail for any reason, directly contradicting the state constitution. This November, state officials put the new law into effect. More than 2.5 million Pennsylvanians voted by mail on November 6 (or after), in numbers far exceeding the margin of difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. When Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly and others challenged the law, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the case without hearing the merits – violating its own precedent in doing so. To date, no one has mounted a substantive defense of the state law under which the November election was conducted. And contrary to Senator Toomey’s claims, no court has ruled on the merits of this question. These are very serious irregularities, on a very large scale, in a presidential election.” -Josh Hawley via Ann Wilson, “Toomey says no evidence of election fraud, Hawley challenges him to debate on Senate floor,” thebl.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 194. | 1/4/2021 “You look at something that happened in Pennsylvania, for example, where you had a state that didn’t even follow its own constitution and its own laws. You’ve got allegations of irregularities in that state and many others. It is vital that we be heard on this issue and that we have a chance to debate it, and that’s why I’m going to object [to certifying the electoral votes]… Pennsylvania politicians changed the law about mail-in balloting. The Pennsylvania constitution doesn’t allow universal mail-in balloting, they went ahead and changed it anyway. Then the Trump campaign tried to go to court to say, ‘hold on, hold,’ then the court threw them out, without even hearing the substance.” -Josh Hawley, “Baier presses Hawley over elector challenge: Are you arguing ‘Trump will be president’ Jan. 20?,” foxnews.com, January 4, 2021 |
| 195. | 1/4/2021 “What I’m trying to do, Brett, is to raise the concerns that my constituents have all over Missouri. I have heard from people like I’ve never heard before, over the last month, about this election. They have major, major concerns about the integrity, the fairness of this election, and they expect me to stand up and raise those concerns… And they also want action, they want an investigation into these irregularities. They want new election laws to make sure that our elections are secure going forward.” -Josh Hawley, “Baier presses Hawley over elector challenge: Are you arguing ‘Trump will be president’ Jan. 20?,” foxnews.com, January 4, 2021 |
| 196. | 1/6/2021 “We, a United States Senator and Members of the House of Representatives, object to the counting of the electoral votes of the State of Pennsylvania on the ground that they were not, under all of the known circumstances, regularly given.” -Josh Hawley and Scott Perry, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 [Note: According to the Congressional Research Service, objections to a state’s submitted slate of electors may be raised on grounds that electoral votes were not “regularly given” by an elector. The term comes from the US statute outlining how electoral votes are counted in Congress (3 U.S. Code § 15).] |
| 197. | 1/6/2021 “[A] word about Pennsylvania, which is a State that I have been focused on and have objected to, as an example of why people are concerned—why millions of Americans are concerned—about our election integrity. I say to Pennsylvania, quite apart from allegations of any fraud, you have a State constitution that has been interpreted for over a century to say that there is no mail-in balloting permitted except for in very narrow circumstances, which is also provided for in the law. Yet, last year, Pennsylvania’s elected officials passed a whole new law that allowed for universal mail-in balloting, and they did it, irregardless of what the Pennsylvania Constitution said. Then, when Pennsylvania’s citizens tried to be heard on this subject before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, they were dismissed on grounds of procedure and timeliness, in violation of that supreme court’s own precedent. So the merits of the case have never been heard. The constitutionality of the statute, actually, has never been defended. I am not aware of any court that has passed on its constitutionality. I actually am not aware of anybody who has defended the constitutionality, and this was the statute that governed this last election in which there were over 2.5 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.” -Josh Hawley, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 198. | 1/6/2021 “We do need an investigation into irregularities, fraud. We do need a way forward together. We need election security reforms.” -Josh Hawley, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 199. | 1/13/2021 “As to my specific objection: I objected with regard to Pennsylvania because the state failed to follow its own constitution. The Pennsylvania constitution has been interpreted by the state’s courts for over a century to prohibit mail-in voting, except in clearly stated circumstances. But last year, Pennsylvania politicians adopted universal mail-in voting anyway. To make matters worse, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court then changed the rules for when mail-in ballots could be returned. And when Pennsylvania citizens tried to go to court to object, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the case on procedural grounds, in violation of its own precedent. To this day, no court has found the mail-in voting scheme to be constitutional, or even heard the merits of the case.” -Josh Hawley, “Sen. Josh Hawley: Why I objected to the electoral vote,” columbiatribune.com, January 13, 2021 |
| 200. | 1/13/2021 “Last week I objected during the Joint Session count of electoral votes in order to have a debate on the issue of election integrity. My objection proceeded according to the letter of the statute, which specifically permits for objections and debate, and followed the traditions of Congress… Many, many citizens in Missouri have deep concerns about election integrity. For months, I heard from these Missourians — writing, calling my office, stopping me to talk. They want Congress to take action to see that our elections at every level are free, fair, and secure. They have a right to be heard in Congress. And as their representative, it is my duty to speak on their behalf. That is just what I did last week.” -Josh Hawley, “Sen. Josh Hawley: Why I objected to the electoral vote,” columbiatribune.com, January 13, 2021 |
| 201. | 1/13/2021 “I also objected to point out the unprecedented interference of the Big Tech corporations in this election in favor of the Biden campaign, not just in Pennsylvania but everywhere. Their interference in our democratic process has only accelerated in recent days.” -Josh Hawley, “Sen. Josh Hawley: Why I objected to the electoral vote,” columbiatribune.com, January 13, 2021 |
| 202. | 1/24/2021 “On behalf of the voters of my state, I raised a challenge to the presidential electors from Pennsylvania after that state conducted the election in violation of the state constitution.” -Josh Hawley, “Sen. Hawley: It’s time to stand up against the muzzling of America,” nypost.com, January 24, 2021 |
| 203. | 1/25/2021 “On January 21, seven Democrat Members of the Senate filed an unprecedently frivolous and improper ethics complaint against me and Senator Cruz… The complaint against me does not suggest that my objection to Pennsylvania’s electoral votes was legally improper. No Senator could make such a suggestion with a straight face. Federal law expressly authorizes Senators to object that a State’s electoral votes were not ‘regularly given.’… Moreover, there is a strong legal basis to believe that Pennsylvania’s electoral votes were not regularly given. Indeed, it appears that Pennsylvania conducted the 2020 general election using a mail-voting scheme that violated the Commonwealth’s Constitution. That’s not just my opinion: while no judge has concluded that the mail-voting system was valid, multiple members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court expressed substantial doubt about the validity of the statute.” -Josh Hawley, “Hawley Calls for Investigation into Democrat Abuse of Senate Ethics Process,” hawley.senate.gov, January 25, 2021 |
| 204. | 1/27/2021 “What we need to have are elections that are fair, free and open. I think Congress needs to do its job and look into election irregularities… It [objecting to election results] is about shining a light on what some of the states did. And what the state of Pennsylvania did in particular, where they didn’t follow their own state constitution, they used a mail-in balloting scheme that is unconstitutional under their own state constitution. And then their own state Supreme Court further altered it in order to allow late ballots to come in under what was already an unconstitutional scheme.” -Josh Hawley via Sam Masterson, “LISTEN: Sen. Hawley says he never incited rioters who stormed US Capitol: ‘That is a lie,’” audacy.com, January 27, 2021 |
| 205. | 1/31/2021 “I objected to the state of Pennsylvania [2020 election results] in order to have a debate about election integrity… I think we need election reforms. I think we need to ban ballot harvesting. I think we need to take a hard look at how the mail-in balloting was administered in many of these states, including Pennsylvania, which did not follow their own law.” -Josh Hawley via Charles Creitz, “Hawley defends election objection, claims Dems trying to ‘grab power’ with ‘lie about our motivations,’” foxnews.com, January 31, 2021 |
| 206. | 2/3/2021 “The basic facts are that the Pennsylvania constitution has never permitted universal mail-in balloting… The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the challenge without hearing the substance. They just said ‘Ah, you know, we don’t want to hear it… Pennsylvania did not follow its own Constitution. This is why we need scrutiny on those kinds of irregularities and it’s why we need election reform going forward.” -Josh Hawley via Micheal Mahoney, “Sen. Josh Hawley talks about objection to Pennsylvania’s mail-in vote,” kmbc.com, February 3, 2021 |
| 207. | 2/4/2021 “[M]y intentions are to represent the views of the people of my state and to try to force a debate on election integrity, which is why I objected to only the State of Pennsylvania. And I did so because the State of Pennsylvania didn’t follow its own state constitution with its universal mail-in balloting law. It passed a law and then used a mail-in balloting scheme that its own constitution forbids. And then the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court made it worse by changing the mail-in balloting statute. And when you could return the ballots in the middle of the process and allowing people to return absentee ballots up to three days after the election.” -Josh Hawley via Mike Bush, “’The loyal opposition’ | Full interview with Sen. Josh Hawley,” ksdk.com, February 4, 2021 |
| 16. SENATOR CINDY HYDE-SMITH (R-MS) | |
|---|---|
| 208. | 11/6/2020 “All lawfully cast votes in the presidential election should be vetted fairly and legally. I know the American people will accept the outcome of an open and legitimate process. I support President Trump in his fight to protect our democracy.” -Cindy Hyde-Smith, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 3:59 pm |
| 209. | 11/6/2020 “Do you stand for fair and transparent elections? Do you believe in protecting our democracy? If you want every legal vote counted you can help President Trump by donating to his legal fund” -Cindy Hyde-Smith, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 7:00 pm |
| 210. | 11/6/2020 “Americans should have confidence in our voting system and that all ballots have been submitted correctly and legally. This is precisely what President Trump and his legal team are seeking. Any allegations of voting irregularities, including ballot tampering or voting by ineligible persons, should be investigated and adjudicated to the fullest extent of the law. It is essential to our democracy and the integrity of our elections that this process be allowed to play out in full view of the American people, and that election observers from both sides of the aisle be allowed to participate. Neither the media nor states should rush to declare a winner in closely contested states until all legally-cast ballots have been counted and all legal challenges and required recounts have been resolved.” -Roger Wicker, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Steven Palazzo, Trent Kelly, Michael Guest, “Wicker, Hyde-smith, Palazzo, Kelly, Guest Call For Transparency And Accountability In 2020 Election Count,” hydesmith.senate.gov, November 6, 2020 |
| 211. | 1/6/2021 “I promised to represent the people of Mississippi and the certification process gives me an opportunity to use my vote to voice their concerns. I have followed the proceedings after the 2020 presidential election and heard from many Mississippians who are troubled by the conduct of the election in various states and the eventual outcome. I, along with my constituents, are alarmed with the erosion of integrity of the electoral process. The people I represent do not believe the presidential election was constitutional and cannot accept the Electoral College decision; therefore, I cannot in good conscience support certification. I firmly believe in our Constitution, the rule of law, and the importance of full faith in the integrity of our elections. We, as a nation, must do everything we can to protect and restore confidence in the electoral process.” -Cindy Hyde-Smith, “Hyde-Smith on Opposition to Electoral College Vote Certification,” hydesmith.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 17. SENATOR JIM INHOFE (R-OK) | |
|---|---|
| 212. | 11/10/2020 “You all heard me say over and over again I expect he’ll be re-elected, no doubt, because of the things he’s done. The Democrats were smart in doing what they did, climbing so far out on that branch that everyone’s going to assume it’s [Biden’s victory] a done deal. It’s not a done deal. The president is very sincere about this; it’s not over, but that’s where we are today. We’re not supposed to know that [evidence of fraud] yet. I don’t know that yet. I’m not sure the president knows that. He has the investigation going on, and he has a lot of reasons for believing there is fraud. So, I would say to anyone there from the press that has questions about that, you just have to wait just a short period of time until he comes out and says what — as I mentioned — what fraud is out there, would that have impacted three states in such a way that he should not have lost the election.” -Jim Inhofe via Matt Trotter, “Inhofe: ‘We’re Not Supposed to Know’ Evidence for Trump’s Allegations of Voter Fraud Yet,” publicradiotulsa.org, November 11, 2020 |
| 213. | 12/15/2020 “I would say anything can happen between now and the sixth of January and anyone who says he’s [Biden] officially the President-elect before that is not accurate.” -Jim Inhofe via Alex Cameron, “Sen. Inhofe Says It’s Still Inaccurate To Officially Name Biden President-Elect,” newson6.com, December 15, 2020 |
| 214. | 1/5/2021 “I hear the frustration and anger from so many of my constituents – and believe me when I say that no one was more disappointed in the outcome of the presidential election on November 3 than me. I wanted President Trump to win. I supported him every step of the way – highlighting regularly all he has accomplished in the past four years and authoring the Trump Top 10 card. I understand so many have uncertainty and are questioning of the integrity of our elections. We have a lot of work to do to restore all Americans’ confidence that our elections are held freely and fairly, with every legal vote counted—and are starting that work now.” -Jim Inhofe, “Inhofe Statement on Electoral College Count Tomorrow,” inhofe.senate.gov, January 5, 2021 |
| 18. SENATOR RON JOHNSON (R-WI) | |
|---|---|
| 215. | 12/15/2020 “We have all kinds of examples of fraud, and we know a large percentage of the American public just simply don’t think that was a legitimate election.” -Ron Johnson via WISN 12 News, “Sen. Ron Johnson claims of voter fraud escalating,” YouTube.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 216. | 12/16/2020 “[T]here was fraud in this election. I don’t have any doubt about that, there was fraud. We just don’t know the extent and we don’t know what the remedy would be when identified.” -Ron Johnson, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 217. | 12/16/2020 “[E]ven though courts have handed down decisions and the Electoral College has awarded Joe Biden 306 electoral votes, a large percentage of the American public does not believe the November election results are legitimate. This is not a sustainable state of affairs in our democratic republic. There are many reasons for this high level of skepticism. It starts with today’s climate of hyper-partisanship, which was only exacerbated by the persistent efforts to delegitimize the results of the 2016 election… With less than a month left in my chairmanship of this committee, the examination of irregularities in the 2020 election will obviously be my last investigation and last hearing as chairman. But oversight into election security should continue into the next Congress because we must restore confidence in the integrity of our voting system.” -Ron Johnson, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 218. | 12/16/2020 “I believe the alleged [election] irregularities can be organized into three basic categories. Number one, lax enforcement or violations of election laws and controls. Two, allegations of fraudulent votes and ballot stuffing, and three, corruption of voting machines and software that might be programmed to add or switch votes. In the time we had, it was impossible to fully identify and examine every allegation, but many of these irregularities raise legitimate concerns and they do need to be taken seriously.” -Ron Johnson, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 219. | 12/16/2020 “Today, we will hear testimony on how election laws in some cases were not enforced and how fraudulent voting did occur as it always does. The question that follows is whether the level of fraud would alter the outcome of the election. This year, in dozens of court cases, through the certification process in each state and by the Electoral College vote, the conclusion has collectively been reached that it would not. However, lax enforcement denying effective bipartisan observation of the complete election process and failure to be fully transparent or conduct reasonable audits has led to heightened suspicion.” -Ron Johnson, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 220. | 12/16/2020 “The most difficult [election fraud] allegations to assess involve vulnerabilities in voting machines and the software used. In order to effectively determine the extent to which voting machines were subject to nefarious intrusion or other vulnerabilities, computer science experts must be given the opportunity to examine these allegations. This is a complex issue that has been under congressional for years… The fact that our last two presidential elections have not been accepted as legitimate by large percentages of the American public is a serious problem that threatens our Republic, and I do not say that lightly.” -Ron Johnson, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 221. | 12/16/2020 “I would say the main thing of this hearing is the fact that we need to have confidence in the integrity of our election… And the reality is people have concerns [about the 2020 election] and I’m just saying, these are legitimate concerns.” -Ron Johnson, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 222. | 12/16/2020 “I believe Joe Biden won our state [Wisconsin] by about 20,000 votes… And you’re talking about over 200,000 that were outside of our law, that probably if the law would have been followed, probably shouldn’t have been counted… Should not have been accepted. Shouldn’t have been put in the ballot pool.” -Ron Johnson, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 223. | 12/16/2020 “They called it dangerous. They want to sweep it under the rug. But when Americans don’t have confidence in the legitimacy of the election, that’s a problem we need to solve. #ElectionIntegrity” -Ron Johnson, Twitter.com, December 16, 2020 11:09 pm |
| 224. | 12/21/2020 “My hearing examining irregularities in the 2020 election was important. Many issues and questions were raised that deserve investigation and answers: 1) @RandPaul and Judge Starr talked about how courts really didn’t evaluate evidence of fraud at all… 2) And @senrobportman got Chris Krebs to acknowledge his claims about election security were about CYBER security, not fraud.” -Ron Johnson, Twitter.com, December 21, 2020 11:36 am |
| 225. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 226. | 1/3/2021 “There is voter fraud, there always is. We had one witness talk about 42,000 people voting twice in Nevada.” -Ron Johnson in an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, video via Ben Kamisar, “Sen. Ron Johnson claims effort to object to Biden victory is part of ‘transparency,’” nbcnews.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 227. | 1/3/2021 “The fact of the matter is that we have a unsustainable state of affairs in this country where we have tens of millions of people that do not view this election result as legitimate… What we’re saying is, we need transparency. When you’re trying to investigate wrongdoing in elections, you don’t have very much time so we’re suggesting is let’s set up a commission… to organize all the allegations.” -Ron Johnson in an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, video via Ben Kamisar, “Sen. Ron Johnson claims effort to object to Biden victory is part of ‘transparency,’” nbcnews.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 228. | 1/3/2021 “Vice President Biden has won [Wisconsin] by 20,000 votes, but there are also issues in Wisconsin. One of the things pointed out in our hearing, I entered into the record three letters written by congressional democrats to the voting machine manufacturers… We had Chris Krebbs testify. You know Chris Krebbs said, ‘Oh this was the most secure election.’ But in our hearing, he actually admitted, well, he wasn’t talking about potential fraud, he was just looking at hacking. He also admitted some of these election and tabulation machines are hooked up to the internet… We have an enormous problem in this country, it’s unsustainable, and the only way you solve it is with information and transparency and hearings and investigations… Right now, we’ve got this election. We’ve got tens of millions of Americans that think this election was stolen. We need to get to the bottom of it… we also have to acknowledge there were some real problems here, there were some issues that need to be explored and investigated.” -Ron Johnson in an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, video via Ben Kamisar, “Sen. Ron Johnson claims effort to object to Biden victory is part of ‘transparency,’” nbcnews.com, January 3, 2021 |
| 229. | 1/3/2021 “Two presidential elections in a row, a large portion of the public hasn’t accepted the result. This is not a sustainable state of affairs. I support a special commission to investigate and report on allegations of irregularities before the Electoral College vote is certified.” -Ron Johnson, Twitter.com, January 3, 2021 12:44 pm |
| 230. | 1/4/2021 “I would consider it evidence that across the board in the Democrat precincts, the crucial precincts, the six counties that really determined this election, didn’t every one of those counties have a problem with Republican observers not being allowed to actually observe what was happening? Where you probably have a problem with chain of custody of the ballots, where there are all kinds of questions? […] Was there any news of Democrat observers being shut out of Republican precincts? I didn’t hear any. If there was nothing wrong, why didn’t they have a completely transparent process on election and when they were counting the ballots? They didn’t.” -Ron Johnson in an interview on The Vicki McKenna Show, video via Twitter.com, January 4, 2021 6:29 pm |
| 231. | 1/4/2021 “I think we’re all sensitive to the fact that we want elections to be run by states and we respect states’ rights. But again, we can’t turn a blind eye to the Electoral College when some of these electors were chosen and certified over the objection of their own state legislatures. This is a mess. We knew it was going to be a mess. I agreed with President Trump when he talked about his concern about this vast increase in absentee ballots, and now we’re living the results. It’s Democrats that pushed the envelope. They are the ones who reduced the controls on this, and we have to make sure we have controls to make sure that every legitimate vote not only counts, but that every vote is legitimate.” -Ron Johnson, “Johnson Discusses Electoral Commission on Fox News,” ronjohnson.senate.gov, January 4, 2021 |
| 232. | 1/4/2021 “I share the concern of my Republican colleagues that we don’t want Congress coming in here and overturning the election or disenfranchising voters. I understand that. But we also can’t dismiss these legitimate concerns, this unprecedented level of allegations of voter fraud, and either violations of or lax enforcement of election laws.” -Ron Johnson, “Johnson Discusses Electoral Commission on Fox News,” ronjohnson.senate.gov, January 4, 2021 |
| 233. | 1/4/2021 “The primary part of our effort is first of all to take these allegations seriously. The mainstream press loves saying, ‘There’s no evidence.’ Well, it’s because you haven’t looked… Courts don’t want to get involved in these election cases so they just dismiss them… This is what’s so difficult about proving [election] fraud. One of the reasons I think [election] fraud is probably growing in this country is that we don’t investigate it, we don’t prosecute it, and so people can conduct fraud with impunity… There’s so many irregularities here. There’s so many allegations that need a full investigation.” -Ron Johnson in an interview on Newsmax, video via SenatorRonJohnson, YouTube.com, January 4, 2021 |
| 234. | 1/4/2021 “Why will there be objections on #JAN6? Because election irregularities demand investigation.” -Ron Johnson, Twitter.com, January 4, 2021 11:23 pm |
| 235. | 1/4/2021 “I understand why 50, 60, 70 million people are pretty ticked off, are frustrated, are concerned, have real, legitimate concerns that this election was stolen, and the only solution for those from my standpoint is transparency… Let’s expose all the allegations.” -Ron Johnson in an interview on The Vicki McKenna Show, video via Twitter.com, January 4, 2021 6:29 pm |
| 236. | 1/4/2021 “One of the reasons you could suspect that fraud in our election system is growing, has grown, and will continue to grow, is that it is extremely difficult to investigate these things… They’re not going to admit that they didn’t run a clean election, so they’re going to frustrate everybody’s attempts to uncover the truth.” -Ron Johnson in an interview on The Vicki McKenna Show, video via Twitter.com, January 4, 2021 6:29 pm |
| 237. | 1/4/2021 “I heard an allegation, I haven’t got this proven, but there are now apparently as evidence, impounded evidence, shredded ballots in one county, I think it was Holden County… We’ll have to get to the bottom of it, but my concern is that evidence may be being destroyed. Because again, the people running these elections, they don’t want to get caught. What’s the best way not to get caught? Destroy the evidence.” -Ron Johnson in an interview on The Vicki McKenna Show, video via Twitter.com, January 4, 2021 6:29 pm |
| 238. | 1/5/2021 “I think the main problem from my standpoint is you have so many people in the mainstream media, certainly Democrats, who just want to sweep this under the rug, that just want to dismiss these very serious and legitimate concerns of what happened during the 2020 election… The fact of the matter is, you have tens of millions of Americans who simply don’t believe this is a legitimate outcome. We’ve just gone through four years with the Democrats and extreme left that simply did not acknowledge President Trump as the legitimate president. Now here we are, because of Covid, because of a more than doubling of the number of absentee ballots at the same time Democrats pushed the envelope, relaxing standards. There were some real problems here. The problem is not going away.” -Ron Johnson, “Johnson Discusses Election Integrity, Electoral Commission on Fox News,” ronjohnson.senate.gov, January 5, 2021 |
| 239. | 1/6/2021 “What I’ve been talking about is just the reality of the situation, that tens of millions of Americans are suspicious of the result of this election. And they have a lot of reasons to be suspicious. The dramatic increase in absentee ballots, which even the Carter-Baker commission said increase the rate of fraud. The fact that Democrats pushed the envelope and tried to weaken controls of absentee balloting, even though we ended up with double the number. The fact that [polling place] observers were barred from actually doing their job in observing. If you’re not doing anything wrong, why not let people take a look at it? Then we see allegations of people voting from addresses that are listed as vacant lots by the United States Postal Service People voting that no longer reside in the state that they’re supposed to be voting in. There’s all kinds of troubling accusations [of election fraud].” -Ron Johnson via Jackson Danbeck, “In interview, Sen. Ron Johnson condemns violence, while also insisting allegations of election fraud,” tmj4.com, January 6, 2021 |
| 240. | 1/6/2021 [Charles Benson, news reporter: “Where’s the proof that says he [Biden] stole this election?”] “There’s all kinds of evidence that might point to proof, but you need time to investigate. But the fact of the matter is also, one of the things that’s suspicious about this is, the president’s team hasn’t been able to conduct the proper discovery… This is an unsustainable state of affairs in our country, where you have a large percentage of the American population who are not viewing this as legitimate.” -Ron Johnson via Jackson Danbeck, “In interview, Sen. Ron Johnson condemns violence, while also insisting allegations of election fraud,” tmj4.com, January 6, 2021 |
| 241. | 1/7/2021 “[O]n election day, they saw poll watchers being thrown out or obstructed from observing. They heard reports of dead people voting, votes being cast by people who have moved out of state or reside at vacant addresses, people voting twice, once by absentee ballot and once in person, of large Democrat-controlled counties waiting until after Republican counties have reported and then dumping their vote totals in the wee hours of the morning, election officials and others refusing to turn over evidence to those investigating irregularities, and courts refusing to hear what evidence was obtained and instead dismissing election challenges on procedural grounds. Is it any wonder that so many have lost confidence in the fairness of our election system and question the legitimacy of the result?” -Ron Johnson, “Statement from U.S. Senator Ron Johnson on Electoral College Proceedings,” ronjohnson.senate.gov, January 7, 2021 |
| 242. | 1/7/2021 “I refuse to dismiss the legitimate concerns of tens of millions of Americans who have lost faith in our institutions and the fairness of our electoral process. Those who have lost confidence are not crazy… This is not a problem that can be swept under the rug with the hope it will somehow solve itself… Unless the election irregularities are fully investigated and explanations provided, I fear this problem will fester within the body politic and could lead to even greater rancor and division.” -Ron Johnson, “Statement from U.S. Senator Ron Johnson on Electoral College Proceedings,” ronjohnson.senate.gov, January 7, 2021 |
| 243. | 1/7/2021 “Prior to election day, these patriots [with concerns about election fraud] were reminded of the Carter-Baker Commission’s caution regarding absentee balloting: ‘Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud,’ and then they saw Covid being exploited to dramatically increase the use of absentee voting and extensive efforts to simultaneously weaken the controls governing it. They also hear that one of the social media moguls, Mark Zuckerberg, spent almost half a billion dollars to increase Democrat turnout in Democrat-controlled jurisdictions, and they wonder, ‘Is that even legal?’” -Ron Johnson, “Statement from U.S. Senator Ron Johnson on Electoral College Proceedings,” ronjohnson.senate.gov, January 7, 2021 |
| 244. | 3/9/2021 “I would consider this an election irregularity. It’s understandable why people wonder whether what Mark Zuckerberg did is even legal.” [Note: This tweet linked to an article that stated, “Hundreds of pages of emails and other documents obtained by Wisconsin Spotlight show that grant money from private left leaning groups, funded largely by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, resulted in Democrat activists infiltrating the November presidential election in Wisconsin’s five largest cities.”] -Ron Johnson, Twitter.com, March 9, 2021 6:45 pm |
| 19. SENATOR JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA) | |
|---|---|
| 245. | 11/6/2020 “It doesn’t undermine democracy to insist elections be conducted fairly. POTUS’ allegations about election irregularities should be heard promptly in a court of law. I continue to support Pres. Trump’s reelection and the American principle that every legal vote should be counted.” -John Kennedy, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 11:50 am |
| 246. | 11/6/2020 “Looks like we’re going into overtime. It doesn’t weaken democracy to insist elections be free and fair. The courts should hear President Trump’s allegations of election irregularities, and the same goes for allegations from anyone else. All legal votes must be counted.” -John Kennedy, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 3:51 pm |
| 247. | 11/7/2020 “Most Louisianians get up every day, go to work, obey the law, pay their taxes and try to do right by their kids. They would never join a mob. They care about election integrity, and many are concerned about irregularities surrounding the Nov. 3 election. I came to the Capitol yesterday to give them a voice. I joined several Senate colleagues in calling for a bipartisan commission to inspect election issues raised across the country. Our proposal was not successful, but our goal to ensure full confidence and transparency in our elections—for all Americans—is a noble one, and I’ll keep pursuing it.” -John Kennedy, “Kennedy again condemns mob violence at joint session of Congress,” kennedy.senate.gov, November 7, 2020 |
| 248. | 11/8/2020 “The mainstream media doesn’t decide elections. Citizens casting legal ballots do, and that’s what makes America great. Courts must investigate all voting irregularities to ensure the integrity of our elections and the health of our democracy.” -John Kennedy, Twitter.com, November 8, 2020 4:37 pm |
| 249. | 11/8/2020 “The media is not a court of law. For the integrity of America’s democracy, all legal votes should be counted, and the courts must resolve all allegations of voting irregularities.” -John Kennedy, Twitter.com, November 8, 2020 12:51 pm |
| 250. | 11/9/2020 “A lot of tomfoolery and a few too many shenanigans with this election. I’m not saying that something DID happen, but I’m not so sure something DIDN’T HAPPEN. I’m thinking we may need to take a second look at those ballots and the legitimacy of this election.” -John Kennedy via Wesley Muller and Jarvis DeBerry, “Sen. John Kennedy casts doubt on Biden’s election: ‘I’m not so sure something didn’t happen,’” lailluminator.com, December 8, 2020 |
| 251. | 12/1/2020 “The problem was, we’ve always had an election day. This time, we had an election month. And they’re still counting votes! And there were mail ballots flying around like confetti. And every state legislature has established rules about voting by mail. But all of a sudden, the state courts in many states started changing those rules. In some states, if you didn’t date your ballot as the law requires, your ballot was thrown out. In other states, the state court said, ‘No, it’s okay, they’re counted.’[…] The volume of mail ballots, most of the states just weren’t ready.” -John Kennedy, “Moon Griffon Show: U.S. John Kennedy Speaks Up On Election Fraud Allegations,” soundcloud.com, December 1, 2020 |
| 252. | 12/1/2020 “I’m worried about Georgia. The Georgia secretary of state announced I think yesterday that they’ve already started investigations of people that are already trying to cheat. Registering dead people. I don’t believe that ballot harvesting is legal in Georgia, but there have been allegations that some have tried to do it. A number of prominent Democrats have been encouraging people to move to Georgia and then register to vote. And then leave after they vote. That’s illegal. We’re geared up to challenge every one of those votes. After what just happened across America— we’re still counting votes in some places, for God’s sakes.” -John Kennedy, “Moon Griffon Show: U.S. John Kennedy Speaks Up On Election Fraud Allegations,” soundcloud.com, December 1, 2020 |
| 253. | 1/2/2021 “We must have election integrity. We will object [to certifying electoral votes] unless Congress agrees to a procedure to restore faith in our elections.” -John Kennedy, Facebook.com, January 2, 2021 2:30 pm |
| 254. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 20. SENATOR JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK) | |
|---|---|
| 255. | 12/9/2020 “Glad to see Oklahoma joined Texas in this important pursuit for the facts. @realdonaldtrump and Americans deserve to know the truth in this election & all outstanding questions must be answered by the courts.” [Note: This tweet links to an article titled, “Missouri, 16 other states file brief supporting Texas suit to delay presidential elector appointment.”] -James Lankford, Twitter.com, December 9, 2020 5:20 pm |
| 256. | 12/15/2020 “I have strongly supported and will continue to support, President Trump’s right and responsibility to verify the November election results. But, as a friend recently said to me, ‘only a miracle would change the outcome of the election at this point.’ I have spoken out frequently on the issue of election fraud for years, in fact, I wrote the most referenced election security legislation in the last Congress. There is no question that we still have work to do to make sure every legal vote is counted and every illegal vote is rejected in every American election. I will keep pushing the issue of election security in the future and will work to make sure we encourage every American to vote and that we only count those votes that are legally cast.” -James Lankford via Alex Cameron, “Sen. Inhofe Says It’s Still Inaccurate To Officially Name Biden President-Elect,” newson6.com, December 15, 2020 |
| 257. | 12/16/2020 “Amazingly enough, a week after the election was completed, this November, Oklahomans were listening to other States that were saying things like, ‘We don’t know how many more ballots there are to count.’ […] That gives opportunities for fraud, and questions, and problems. That’s a reasonable question to ask. It’s reasonable to be able to ask if people can drift around and gather ballots from other people and do ballot harvesting, and in some States that’s legal. Does that provide an opportunity for fraud? I think the obvious answer is yes. The obvious answer is, if you mail a ballot to everyone in the state, even if they didn’t ask for it, does it provide an opportunity for fraud, especially when the state did not first purge or verify those addresses, and they sent thousands of ballots to people that no longer live there. I’ve talked to Nevada residents that received multiple ballots at their home for people that no longer live there. That’s a problem.” -James Lankford, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 258. | 12/17/2020 “My Democrat colleagues were focused on fixing potential problems from 2016 yet in 2020 when we have actual problems they tell us to move along. We know there are real problems with fraud in our elections, we should fix it.” -James Lankford, Twitter.com, December 17, 2020 2:38 pm |
| 259. | 12/17/2020 “In 2016, 30% of Americans believed Russia influenced the election. Congress held hearings & investigations to get to the bottom of it. Now, 46% of Americans think there was voter fraud in 2020 & they’re being told ‘move on, get over it’. That’s not reasonable–we deserve answers.” -James Lankford, Twitter.com, December 17, 2020 12:47 pm |
| 260. | 1/2/2021 “In some states, there were problems with signature verification, different rules for mail-in ballots than in-person ballots, delayed receipt of ballots, inconsistent curing of ballots, a lack of meaningful access to the polls, or a questionable counting process for partisan poll watchers.” -James Lankford, “Lankford Calls for Election Commission to Review 2020 Voter Fraud,” lankford.senate.gov, January 2, 2021 |
| 261. | 1/2/2021 “Millions of Americans, including thousands of Oklahomans, still have significant questions about the November 3 election process. We have reports of problems with voting machines, people voting twice, non-residents voting in a state, or people mysteriously voting after their death months or years before.” -James Lankford, “Lankford Calls for Election Commission to Review 2020 Voter Fraud,” lankford.senate.gov, January 2, 2021 |
| 262. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 263. | 1/5/2021 “Some states have ignored problems in their voting systems for too long, and now we are reaping the consequences. President Donald Trump spoke often about voting problems in 2016 and 2020, especially with mail-in voting. Some states took action to strengthen their voting verification, but some actually loosened their voting requirements without increasing security. There is no question that there were some problems across the country with signature verifications, people receiving multiple ballots in the mail, different rules in some states for mail-in ballots than in-person ballots, double voting, last-minute election rule changes, ballot harvesting, delayed receipt of ballots, inconsistent curing of ballots and a lack of meaningful access to the polls or counting processes for partisan poll watchers.” -James Lankford, “U.S. Sen. James Lankford: Oklahomans and the nation deserve confidence in the election results,” tulsaworld.com, January 5, 2021 |
| 264. | 1/5/2021 “If you randomly catch any 10 Oklahomans on the street today and ask them if there was at least some voter fraud in the November election, my suspicion is a majority of them would say yes. I am disappointed when some people say to me, ‘We always have dead people who vote or double voting, no big deal.’ If we know there is a problem, let’s fix it.” -James Lankford, “U.S. Sen. James Lankford: Oklahomans and the nation deserve confidence in the election results,” tulsaworld.com, January 5, 2021 |
| 265. | 1/6/2021 “What happens if you don’t trust the election count or you are concerned that so many courts denied or dismissed cases within hours after they were given thousands of pages of evidence? […] The constitutional crisis in our country right now is that millions of Americans are being told to sit down and shut up. Their opinions matter… A small group of Senators, including myself, have demanded that we not ignore the questions that millions of people are asking in our Nation, so we have proposed a constitutional solution. Pause the count. Get more facts to the States before January the 20th… I have some colleagues who have said that a 10-day commission is not enough time, so they have counter-proposed just ignoring the lingering questions. We need to do something.” -James Lankford, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 21. SENATOR MIKE LEE (R-UT) | |
|---|---|
| 266. | 12/14/2020 “Concerns regarding fraud and irregularities in this election remain active in multiple states, and those concerns need to be addressed by Congress and state and local officials throughout the country. But absent new information that could give rise to a judicial or legislative determination altering the impact of today’s electoral-college votes, Joe Biden will become president of the United States on January 20, 2021.” -Mike Lee, “Sen. Lee Notes Electoral College Certification,” lee.senate.gov, December 14, 2020 |
| 267. | 1/6/2021 “While it is true that legitimate concerns have been raised with regard to how some of the key battleground States conducted their Presidential elections, this is not the end of the story.” [Note: Sen. Lee went on to explain why he believed Congress does not have the authority to reject the slate of presidential electors.] -Mike Lee, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 22. SENATOR KELLY LOEFFLER (R-GA) | |
|---|---|
| 268. | 11/9/2020 “The management of Georgia elections has become an embarrassment for our state. Georgians are outraged, and rightly so. We have been clear from the beginning: every legal vote cast should be counted. Any illegal vote must not. And there must be transparency and uniformity in the counting process. This isn’t hard. This isn’t partisan. This is American.” -Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, “Joint Statement From Senators David Perdue And Kelly Loeffler,” perduesenate.gov (via archive.org), November 9, 2020 |
| 269. | 11/9/2020 “We believe when there are failures, they need to be called out — even when it’s in your own party. There have been too many failures in Georgia elections this year and the most recent election has shined a national light on the problems. While blame certainly lies elsewhere as well, the buck ultimately stops with the Secretary of State. The mismanagement and lack of transparency from the Secretary of State is unacceptable. Honest elections are paramount to the foundation of our democracy. The Secretary of State has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections.” -Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, “Joint Statement From Senators David Perdue And Kelly Loeffler,” perduesenate.gov (via archive.org), November 9, 2020 |
| 270. | 11/12/2020 “Americans should have total confidence that every legal vote is counted. What is clear from the 2020 presidential election is that serious oversight of the administering of our nation’s elections is long overdue.” -Kelly Loeffler, “Senators Loeffler, Perdue Introduce SAFE Votes Act,” loeffler.senate.gov (via archive.org), November 12, 2020 |
| 271. | 12/6/2020 “It was very clear that there were issues in this election, there were 250 investigations open, including an investigation into one of my opponent’s organizations for voter fraud. We have to make sure that Georgians trust this process for what’s at stake in this election.” -Kelly Loeffler, “Kelly Loeffler Dodges Question on Election Rigging, as Jon Ossoff Debates Empty Room,” newsweek.com, December 6, 2020 |
| 272. | 12/18/2020 “There is too much at stake in these elections for there to be any doubt in the integrity and transparency of their outcomes. Georgians will not tolerate double-voting and failures to address out-of-state voters attempting to influence the results of these elections. Immediate action is required to ensure that doesn’t occur.” -David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Twitter.com, December 18, 2020 2:18 pm |
| 273. | 12/31/2020 “With the potential of voter fraud and ballot tampering at our doorstep, we must do everything in our power to crack down on bad actors and ensure the integrity of our elections. If you tamper with the ballot box, you should face severe penalties.” -Kelly Loeffler, Twitter.com, December 31, 2020 5:19 pm |
| 274. | 1/4/2021 “Elections are the bedrock of our democracy and the American people deserve to be 100% confident in our election system and its outcomes. But right now, tens of millions of Americans have real concerns about the way in which the November Presidential election was conducted — and I share their concerns. The American people deserve a platform in Congress, permitted under the Constitution, to have election issues presented so that they can be addressed. That’s why, on January 6th, I will vote to give President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve and support the objection to the Electoral College certification process. I have also already introduced legislation to establish a commission to investigate election irregularities and recommend election integrity measures, which I will be working to get passed in the Senate. We must restore trust, confidence and integrity in our election system.” -Kelly Loeffler, “Loeffler Statement on the Electoral College Certification Process,” loeffler.senate.gov (via archive.org, January 4, 2021 |
| 275. | 1/6/2021 “I believe that there were last-minute changes to the November 2020 election process and serious irregularities that resulted in too many Americans losing confidence not only in the integrity of our elections but in the power of the ballot as a tool of democracy. Too many Americans are frustrated at what they see as an unfair system… We as a body must turn our focus to protecting the integrity of our elections and restoring every American’s faith that their voice and their vote matter.” -Kelly Loeffler, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 276. | 2/22/2021 “Do you feel like your voice was heard in the 2020 election? Do you feel your vote was secure? For too many the answer is NO & that’s a serious problem.” -Kelly Loeffler, Twitter.com, February 22, 2021 12:36 pm |
| 277. | 3/16/2021 “Georgia voters deserve to have confidence that their voice – and their vote – is heard. Unfortunately, the many irregularities we saw in the 2020 elections have eroded trust in our electoral process. We fully support the move to unseal and investigate absentee ballot process in Fulton County. Transparency is the first step toward restoring integrity and accountability in our elections.” -Kelly Loeffler, Twitter.com, March 16, 2021 12:18 pm |
| 278. | 3/19/2021 “These challenges to our country’s foundations are compounded by unprecedented mistrust over elections. Many states made rapid, opaque, and inconsistent changes to elections in 2020. Ironically, it was Democrats who spent most of 2020 decrying election fairness and integrity, warning about the post office, voting machines, and suppression, and calling for protests.” -Kelly Loeffler, “How to rebuild trust in Georgia elections,” washingtonexaminer.com, March 19, 2021 |
| 279. | 3/19/2021 “Our Senate runoff was the result of many variables. But within our control was the fact that Republicans were outmaneuvered by the Democratic machine. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams’s Fair Fight built a national fundraising organization that created a fundamental shift in voting… To add insult to injury, Abrams supports allowing undocumented illegal immigrants the right to vote while her own related organization, The New Georgia Project, is under active investigation for voter fraud… The other (and often unsaid) fact is that Fair Fight is not just about registering everyone to vote. It is solely focused on registering Democrats, orchestrating unprecedented dark money for liberal candidates, and using the courts to change our electoral system. As a result, Democrats made significant gains in both the November and January elections.” -Kelly Loeffler, “How to rebuild trust in Georgia elections,” washingtonexaminer.com, March 19, 2021 |
| 280. | 3/25/2021 “2020 saw rapid, inconsistent, and unprecedented changes to our elections that eroded voters’ confidence.” -Kelly Loeffler, Twitter.com, March 25, 2021 7:18 pm |
| 23. SENATOR CYNTHIA LUMMIS (R-WY) | |
|---|---|
| 281. | 11/13/2020 “Democrats just spent the last four years questioning the integrity of our elections. Now they don’t want us to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ to protect the validity of the vote? Nonsense. Ensuring election integrity is core to our democratic republic. Let’s get it right and protect the vote.” -Cynthia Lummis, Facebook.com, November 13, 2020 1:10 pm |
| 282. | 12/10/2020 “We must protect free and fair elections! I commend these legislators on their outreach to Governor Gordon and the Attorney General. I completely agree. Wyoming should join Texas and (currently) 18 other states in this suit. I have heard from many in Wyoming and around the country who are concerned about the integrity of our electoral process. It is incumbent on us to uncover the truth and protect the vote upon which our system of government rests.” -Cynthia Lummis, Facebook.com, December 10, 2020 1:18 pm |
| 283. | 12/14/2020 “I feel good about the safety of the vote coming up in Georgia on January 5th, because all eyes are going to be on Georgia. So I believe that we’ll have poll watchers that will be able to look at the envelopes and the signatures on the envelopes, compare them to the signatures on the ballot, the ballots will have watermarks on them that indicates they are the official ballot and many other mechanisms to make sure that this election has way more integrity and will have better buy-in than some of the states in November [presidential election].” -Cynthia Lummis, “Sen-Elect Cynthia Lummis (R-WY): I Feel Good About The Integrity Of The Georgia Vote,” radio.foxnews.com, December 14, 2020 |
| 284. | 1/2/2021 “Confidence in, and the protection of, the integrity of our electoral system is at the root of our democratic process. I have heard from hundreds of Wyoming residents in recent weeks who are concerned about the integrity of the 2020 Presidential election process in several states. I’m joining with a number of Republican US Senate colleagues to follow the steps laid out in the 12th Amendment and the process established in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to protect the vote for all Americans.” -Cynthia Lummis, Facebook.com, January 2, 2021 2:21 pm |
| 285. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 286. | 1/6/2021 “In the coming months, Congress must take a fresh look at troubling concerns from the [2020] election that simply don’t add up. After the 2000 presidential election, millions of voters in Florida felt disenfranchised, and now 74 million Americans deserve the assurance and the dignity that their votes count the same as every other American.” -Cynthia Lummis, “Sen. Lummis Votes to Oppose Pennsylvania Election Results,” sheridanmedia.com, January 6, 2021 |
| 287. | 1/6/2021 “I remain deeply concerned that the electoral votes of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania were not ‘regularly given’ under Pennsylvania law, as required by the Electoral Count Act. Serious concerns have been raised about the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail statute. Also, Pennsylvania election law may have been applied unevenly by state officials, including signature verification and voter identification requirements.” -Cynthia Lummis, “Sen. Lummis Votes to Oppose Pennsylvania Election Results,” sheridanmedia.com, January 6, 2021 |
| 288. | 1/7/2021 “I have serious concerns about election integrity, especially in Pennsylvania, and expressed some of them in a written statement to the Senate… The allegations of fraud during this election were unprecedented, and left millions of Americans concerned that their votes don’t count. Discussions of election integrity must occur and I will seek another forum to continue that discussion.” -Cynthia Lummis, “Statement from Senator Cynthia Lummis on Electoral College certification vote,” lummis.senate.gov, January 7, 2021 |
| 289. | 1/9/2021 “Days before this attack on the Capitol, I stated my intention to join a group of colleagues to raise concerns about the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s new vote-by-mail statute, and that Pennsylvania’s election law may have been applied unevenly by state officials, including signature verification and voter identification requirements. Even the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s chief justice noted that one of the lawsuits in his state raised ‘troubling questions about the constitutional validity of the new mail-in voting scheme.’ Legislators, election judges, Congressmen and others in Pennsylvania are concerned. Wyoming citizens are concerned, too.” -Cynthia Lummis, “Cynthia Lummis: Here’s Why I Objected To Pennsylvania’s Electors,” cowboystatedaily.com, January 9, 2021 |
| 290. | 1/9/2021 “The hard truth is, this election rocked the faith of many Wyoming citizens in the integrity of our election system. Polling shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ We cannot turn a blind eye to American citizens not having trust in the integrity of our election systems. And Congress has a long history of using the Constitutional process of certifying electors to highlight election concerns.” -Cynthia Lummis, “Cynthia Lummis: Here’s Why I Objected To Pennsylvania’s Electors,” cowboystatedaily.com, January 9, 2021 |
| 291. | 1/9/2021 “My fervent hope is that in state legislatures across the country where irregularities occurred, their lawmakers will consider meaningful election reform to ensure that our election laws are applied uniformly, to ensure the technology we use is accurate and secure, and most importantly, to ensure that all Americans treasure our precious right to vote and feel their voices are heard.” -Cynthia Lummis, “Cynthia Lummis: Here’s Why I Objected To Pennsylvania’s Electors,” cowboystatedaily.com, January 9, 2021 |
| 292. | 1/9/2021 “Congress needs to shine a light on election fraud and irregularities where they are alleged to have occurred. Now specifically, Pennsylvania was the state that I’ve been focusing on, because their own constitution has prevented them from having non face-to-face elections in the past. And this was their first attempt at having an election by mail. I spoke with people who showed up to vote on election day in Pennsylvania only to be told that they were being turned away from voting because they had already voted by mail when they had not already voted by mail. This was not just anecdotal evidence. So clearly, Pennsylvania’s attempt at voting by mail produced irregularities, the kinds of which we don’t see in Wyoming… But when tons of irregularities are pointed out and 17 state legislators in Pennsylvania conducted forensic audits of their voting in Pennsylvania and found that there were areas where more votes were cast and counted than there were people, these kinds of significant irregularities in results used in an election that was a first-time exercise of the right to vote by mail in Pennsylvania does indicate problems.” -Cynthia Lummis via Nick Reynolds, “In CST interview, Lummis explains controversial Electoral College objection,” trib.com, January 9, 2021 |
| 24. SENATOR ROGER MARSHALL (R-KS) | |
|---|---|
| 293. | 12/9/2020 “The Texas Attorney General has appealed to The SCOTUS to consider a lawsuit regarding alleged unlawful voting changes in four battleground states. We should all support ensuring our election was conducted constitutionally and ethically.” -Roger Marshall, Twitter.com, December 9, 2020 3:54 pm |
| 294. | 12/10/2020 “Today I joined Congressman Mike Johnson and 104 other House colleagues in filing an Amicus brief in the Texas Attorney General’s lawsuit currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawsuit, which is joined by President Trump and 16 other Republican Attorneys Generals, including Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, challenges the validity of the outcome of the Nov. 4 general elections in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All four states have certified the election results despite outstanding claims of fraud and corruption. By filing this Amicus, we are seeking to affirm for the Court our serious concerns with the integrity of our election system, and reaffirm our belief that the various allegations and irregularities in those states merits careful, timely review by the Supreme Court. The American people must have confidence in the outcome of this election, and we must continue doing all we can to ensure our elections are conducted according to the Constitution, free from corruption and outside manipulation.” -Roger Marshall, Facebook.com, December 10, 2020 10:08 pm |
| 295. | 1/2/2021 “We must hold accountable any state that disregarded the law or our constitution. The Electoral College is only as strong as the states who are entrusted to follow election laws. That is why I will be supporting objection and debate next week.” -Roger Marshall, Twitter.com, January 2, 2021 1:46 pm |
| 296. | 1/2/2021 “Our congressional office has received thousands of emails and phone calls and I personally have received hundreds of texts, phone calls, and emails on the matter. An overwhelming majority believes we should reject some of the Electoral College votes from certain states. As is true with many Kansans, tens of millions of Americans have concerns about the past presidential election. They do not have confidence in our election process, and their voices must be heard. For these reasons and after carefully weighing the evidence, I am not confident this past presidential election was conducted in a manner that is fully consistent with state and federal law. I therefore intend to object during the Electoral College certification process next week to allow the needed debates to occur. It is important to note that this debate process may even give some people confidence… We must hold accountable any state that disregarded the law and our Constitution.” -Roger Marshall, Facebook.com, January 2, 2021 2:04 pm |
| 297. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 298. | 1/6/2021 “There is no question our U.S. Constitution empowers State legislatures to execute free, legal, and fair elections. Unfortunately, in several States, the clear authority of those State legislatures to determine the rules for voting was usurped by Governors, secretaries of state, and activist courts. Our laws and Constitution should always be followed, especially in a time of crisis… This is why I urge the formation of an electoral commission to give constructive suggestions and recommendations that States can take to make our elections once again safe, free, and fair after a year of jarring irregularities.” -Roger Marshall, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 25. SENATOR RAND PAUL (R-KY) | |
|---|---|
| 299. | 11/6/2020 “KY Dem Ed Pritchard was convicted of voter fraud in 1949 for fraudulently casting 254 votes. His biographer said: ‘the untidy truth was that widespread vote fraud was America’s dirty little secret . . .’ Elections with millions of mail ballots makes fraud more likely not less.” -Rand Paul, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 10:17 am |
| 300. | 11/6/2020 “The history of voter fraud in absentee voting is long, but it was usually difficult to affect an election because less than 1% voted absentee. Policing postmarks, signatures and fraud is now overwhelming because half the electorate votes by mail.” -Rand Paul, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 9:23 am |
| 301. | 11/9/2020 “I don’t know if there’s fraud but we ought to investigate to see if there’s fraud. If there were a million votes cast, maybe in Pennsylvania, absentee, should we not make sure that they are eligible voters? If they were supposed to sign the form, should the form be signed? Should the postmark be checked to see if it was postmarked before the election?” -Rand Paul via Lexi Schweinert, “Sen. Rand Paul says there should be a ballot recount for presidential election,” wnky.com, November 9, 2020 |
| 302. | 11/9/2020 “The other thing that looks terrible, whether there’s fraud or not, but makes Republicans feel like ‘man we got gypped,’ is that he’s ahead all throughout the election. The election ends, he’s still ahead, and then slowly drip by drip they keep finding votes. And they may all be legitimate but you can see how it’s a terrible optic for people from the Republican side to see ‘we won, we won, we won’, and then we’re starting to win less and a little less as more and more huge boxes of votes come in. Maybe they are all legitimate, but let’s make sure they are. And then if Biden wants a legitimate victory, he should be for counting all the votes. He says he is. Let’s count ’em all and see to check if anyone’s dead. I mean I just passed legislation on sending checks to dead people.” -Rand Paul via Lexi Schweinert, “Sen. Rand Paul says there should be a ballot recount for presidential election,” wnky.com, November 9, 2020 |
| 303. | 11/9/2020 “I think it’s better for all of us in a really close election to feel better about it, even if you lost, you’ll feel better about it if they do some sampling of the millions of ballots. Make sure that there’s not a lot of dead people or ineligible voters, people voting twice, things like that… I think also some sampling of the mail-in ballots would be good to reassure people who are on the losing side that there wasn’t a widespread fraud… I think it would be much more acceptable for those on the losing side to say ‘well, there wasn’t fraud.’ But instead they say ‘prove that there’s fraud.’ I don’t have the ability to say look at the ballots, I can’t prove there was. But we do know that absentee ballots are at more risk for manipulation than in person ballots. Because they’ve been mailed in, you didn’t see the person vote, you don’t know who mailed the ballot in.” -Rand Paul via Lexi Schweinert, “Sen. Rand Paul says there should be a ballot recount for presidential election,” wnky.com, November 9, 2020 |
| 304. | 11/9/2020 “Your government sent 1.1 million dead people stimulus checks. Wonder how many of these folks also voted absentee?” -Rand Paul, Twitter.com, November 9, 2020 9:39 am |
| 305. | 11/20/2020 “When the media says no evidence of widespread fraud, perhaps they mean no evidence, if you look the other way…” [Note: This tweet links to an article titled, “In sworn statement, prominent mathematician flags up to 100,000 Pennsylvania ballots”] -Rand Paul, Twitter.com, November 20, 2020 9:13 am |
| 306. | 11/29/2020 “Interesting . . . Trump margin of ‘defeat’ in 4 states occurred in 4 data dumps between 1:34-6:31 AM. Statistical anomaly? Fraud? Look at the evidence and decide for yourself.(That is, if Big Tech allows u to read this) Anomalies in Vote Counts” [Note: This tweet links to an article titled, “Anomalies in Vote Counts and Their Effects on Election 2020.”] -Rand Paul, Twitter.com, November 29, 2020 4:27 pm |
| 307. | 12/6/2020 “The system that was set up this year in many states, with greater mail voting, is inherently a problem. It is more difficult to ascertain the validity of the ballot than it is with in person voting. That’s why we’ve traditionally limited the practice to those who had no choice… For the first time in history, we had tens of millions of mail-in votes. Is it too much to ask that they be validated in ways that satisfy the questions that our side has? I think not. Our elections should be free and fair. We should likely revert to our traditional methods of voting in the future to avoid such questions, but for now, we deserve full and complete answers.” -Rand Paul, “Rand Paul: Making clear my positions on the Trump recounts, COVID, lockdowns, schools, and masks,” nkytribune.com, December 6, 2020 |
| 308. | 12/6/2020 “I’m glad a bunch of people who couldn’t pass high school statistics don’t see some anomalies in the vote counts. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and this kind of thing should always be checked into carefully, which is all we and many Kentuckians are asking… The data dumps that I and others have referred to are anomalous because they show large winning percentages in excess of 90 percent for one candidate [Biden], and they contrast with every other dump in the spread between the candidates.” -Rand Paul, “Rand Paul: Making clear my positions on the Trump recounts, COVID, lockdowns, schools, and masks,” nkytribune.com, December 6, 2020 |
| 309. | 12/14/2020 “In Georgia, we’ve been told 10,000 dead people voted. We’ve also been told that as much as 30 or 40,000 people voted who weren’t yet 18… You have to police the election. In the old days, you policed it by having in-person elections. Now that’s it’s done by mail, and nobody’s going to check the age of the people or whether they’re deceased, or whether they actually live in Georgia, that’s a real problem. And it’s why seven out 10 Republicans, myself included, have doubts about this last election.” -Rand Paul in an interview on Fox News, video via Twitter.com, December 14, 2020 12:08 pm |
| 310. | 12/16/2020 “What we’ve heard about what happened in Wisconsin, what happened in Nevada, I think is absolutely true, and we have to prevent it from happening again… We can’t just say, oh, 4,000 people voted in Nevada that were non-citizens, and we’re just going to ignore it, we’re going to sweep it under the rug… The courts never looked at the facts. The courts don’t like elections, hence they stayed out of it by finding an excuse, standing or otherwise, to stay out of it. But the fraud happened, the election in many ways was stolen.” -Rand Paul, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 311. | 12/16/2020 “The courts have not said there wasn’t [election] fraud. The courts just simply didn’t rule on or hear from the fraud… I think courts have historically been reticent to get involved in elections and to look at fraud, but moving forward, we’ve got to change the rules, or reevaluate our state rules, in order that this doesn’t happen again. We can’t just sit by and say we’re going to let it happen again.” -Rand Paul, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 312. | 12/16/2020 “There is another important aspect of this though, that is a legal aspect that I think does need to be heard by the courts… And this is the question of whether or not people who are non-legislators, can change the election law. And this happened in many, many states, probably two dozen states decided to accept ballots after the election, two dozen states decided they could mail out applications or mail out ballots, all without the will of the legislature.” -Rand Paul, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 313. | 12/16/2020 “To say it was the safest election, sure, I agree with your statement if you’re referring to foreign intervention. But if you’re saying it’s the safest election based on, no dead people voted, no non-citizens voted, no people broke the absentee rules, I think that’s false.” -Rand Paul, “Fired Election Official Chris Krebs Senate Testimony on 2020 Election Security Transcript,” rev.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 314. | 12/24/2020 “$130 million [in federal aid] to promote democracy in Nepal. $15 million to promote it in Pakistan. Interesting, since we can’t even seem to validate mail in ballots in the United States properly.” -Rand Paul, Twitter.com, December 24, 2020 9:37 am |
| 315. | 1/24/2021 “The debate over whether or not there was fraud [in the 2020 election] should occur, we never had any presentation in court where we actually looked at the evidence. Most of the cases were thrown out for lack of standing, which is a procedural way of not actually hearing the question. There were several states in which the law was changed by the secretary of state, and not the state legislature. To me, those are clearly unconstitutional. And I think there’s still a chance that those actually do finally work their way up to the Supreme Court… But, yes, were there people who voted twice, were there dead people who voted, were there illegal aliens who voted? Yes, and we should get to the bottom of it.” -Rand Paul in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” via Jack Arnholz, “Sen. Rand Paul continues making false claims of 2020 election fraud,” abcnews.go.com, January 24, 2021 |
| 316. | 1/24/2021 “Let’s talk about the specifics of it. In Wisconsin, tens of thousands of absentee votes had only the name on them and no address. Historically, those were thrown out, and this time they weren’t. They made special accommodations because they said, ‘Oh, it’s a pandemic, and people forgot what their address was.’ So they changed the law after the fact. That is wrong, that’s unconstitutional, and I plan on spending the next two years going around state to state and fixing these problems, and I won’t be cowed by liberals in the media who say, ‘There’s no evidence here [of voter fraud] and you’re a liar if you talk about election fraud.” -Rand Paul in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” via Jack Arnholz, “Sen. Rand Paul continues making false claims of 2020 election fraud,” abcnews.go.com, January 24, 2021 |
| 317. | 1/24/2021 “I want to look at election fraud, and I want to look at secretaries of state who illegally changed the voter laws without the permission of their state legislatures. That is incontrovertible, it happened, and you can’t just sweep it under the rug.” -Rand Paul in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” via Jack Arnholz, “Sen. Rand Paul continues making false claims of 2020 election fraud,” abcnews.go.com, January 24, 2021 |
| 318. | 1/24/2021 “I accepted the state certifications, but it doesn’t mean I think there wasn’t fraud, and that there weren’t problems that have to be investigated, and it doesn’t mean that the law wasn’t broken. I believe in Pennsylvania they broke the law, and I believe that if that would ever get a real hearing in the Supreme Court — it was denied for standing, it wasn’t actually taken up — if it were taken up, I do believe that the Supreme Court would overrule and say that they did break the law illegally… I think there was a great deal of evidence of fraud and changing of the election laws illegally.” -Rand Paul in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” via Jack Arnholz, “Sen. Rand Paul continues making false claims of 2020 election fraud,” abcnews.go.com, January 24, 2021 |
| 319. | 1/24/2021 “Partisan Democrats in the media think they can get away with just calling Republicans liars because they don’t agree with us… I voted to certify the electors and seat the new President. It’s not about that anymore. They won’t even admit there is election fraud and want to pretend nothing happened. That’s why I’ll spend the next two years going to every state legislature trying to fix the laws, protect our vote and stop election fraud.” -Rand Paul, Twitter.com, January 24, 2021 10:07 am |
| 26. SENATOR DAVID PERDUE (R-GA) | |
|---|---|
| 320. | 11/5/2020 “Every lawful vote cast should be counted, once. If that happens, I believe President Trump will be re-elected.” -David Perdue, Facebook.com, November 5, 2020 6:16 pm |
| 321. | 11/9/2020 “The management of Georgia elections has become an embarrassment for our state. Georgians are outraged, and rightly so. We have been clear from the beginning: every legal vote cast should be counted. Any illegal vote must not. And there must be transparency and uniformity in the counting process. This isn’t hard. This isn’t partisan. This is American.” -Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, “Joint Statement From Senators David Perdue And Kelly Loeffler,” perduesenate.gov (via archive.org), November 9, 2020 |
| 322. | 11/9/2020 “We believe when there are failures, they need to be called out — even when it’s in your own party. There have been too many failures in Georgia elections this year and the most recent election has shined a national light on the problems. While blame certainly lies elsewhere as well, the buck ultimately stops with the Secretary of State. The mismanagement and lack of transparency from the Secretary of State is unacceptable. Honest elections are paramount to the foundation of our democracy. The Secretary of State has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections.” -Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, “Joint Statement From Senators David Perdue And Kelly Loeffler,” perduesenate.gov (via archive.org), November 9, 2020 |
| 323. | 11/12/2020 “Our democracy depends on the integrity of our elections. Every legal vote must be counted, and any illegal vote must not be counted. Many Americans have serious questions about how the 2020 election was administered, and they deserve answers. We need a clear picture of where things went wrong and how we can fix it going forward.” -David Perdue, “Senators Loeffler, Perdue Introduce SAFE Votes Act,” loeffler.senate.gov (via archive.org), November 12, 2020 |
| 324. | 12/18/2020 “There is too much at stake in these elections for there to be any doubt in the integrity and transparency of their outcomes. Georgians will not tolerate double-voting and failures to address out-of-state voters attempting to influence the results of these elections. Immediate action is required to ensure that doesn’t occur.” -David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Twitter.com, December 18, 2020 2:18 pm |
| 27. SENATOR ROB PORTMAN (R-OH) | |
|---|---|
| 325. | 11/23/2020 “I have supported the Trump campaign’s right to count every lawful vote, request state recounts and pursue lawsuits regarding election fraud or other irregularities. Based on polling, a substantial majority of the nearly 74 million Americans who supported President Trump question the legitimacy of the election… There were instances of fraud and irregularities in this election, as there have been in every election. It is good that those have been exposed and any fraud or other wrongdoing should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but there is no evidence as of now of any widespread fraud or irregularities that would change the result in any state.” -Rob Portman, “Portman: No proof of mass fraud that would change election result,” cincinnati.com, November 23, 2020 |
| 326. | 1/4/2021 “Following the election, I supported the Trump campaign’s right to pursue recounts and legal challenges. There were instances of fraud and irregularities, as there are in every presidential election, and those who engaged in that conduct should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But after two months of recounts and legal challenges, not a single state recount changed a result and, of the dozens of lawsuits filed, not one found evidence of fraud or irregularities widespread enough to change the result of the election… I understand that despite these findings and the state certifications, many Americans believe the election was unfairly decided and, as I noted, there were instances of fraud and irregularities that occurred. For these reasons, for the past several weeks I have advocated that Congress should establish a blue ribbon bipartisan panel on election integrity that would provide transparency into issues in the 2020 election, and recommend best practices for the next election.” -Rob Portman, “Portman Statement on the Formal Count of the Electoral College Votes by Congress,” portman.senate.gov, January 4, 2021 |
| 327. | 1/6/2021 “I agree that there were instances of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 elections. I think we all do. And by the way, there are fraud and irregularities in every Presidential election. But it is also true that after 2 months of recounts and legal challenges, not a single State recount changed the result.” -Rob Portman, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 28. SENATOR JIM RISCH (R-ID) | |
|---|---|
| 328. | 1/6/2021 “The business we conducted today showed there is deep distrust in the integrity and veracity of our elections. We need to restore American’s faith in our voting process. I am committed to pursue that so all of America has the benefit of what we enjoy in Idaho – solid confidence in the outcome of our elections. An open, transparent system with clear guidelines and rigorous safeguards is vital.” -Jim Risch, “Risch on U.S. Capitol Riots and Vote to Certify the Results of the 2020 Presidential Election,” risch.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 29. SENATOR MARCO RUBIO (R-FL) | |
|---|---|
| 329. | 1/6/2021 “I have heard from a lot of people about this vote… And they are upset. They are upset. They look at the media, and the media, they censored stories that might have been negative toward Joe Biden or were negative toward Joe Biden, and social media companies helped them out. And they saw how some States tinkered with and even mutilated State election laws, and they have doubts that the election was legitimate. It gives this country this extraordinary crisis of confidence, which is very dangerous because democracy is very fragile, and it is not held together by elections. Democracy is held together by people’s confidence in the election and their willingness to abide by its results.” -Marco Rubio, “Congressional Record,” congress.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 30. SENATOR RICK SCOTT (R-FL) | |
|---|---|
| 330. | 11/5/2020 “Free and fair elections is what America is about. Every LEGAL vote needs to be counted fairly and transparently. I filed the Voter Act to protect the integrity of our elections. Now more than ever we need nationwide standards for counting mail in ballots.” -Rick Scott, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 5:33 pm |
| 331. | 11/6/2020 “President @realDonaldTrump is absolutely right to demand transparency and to demand that all irregularities be investigated completely. Good for him. If you’ve witnessed any irregularities, you can report them here: [link to Voter Fraud Report Form]” -Rick Scott, Twitter.com, November 6, 2020 9:05 am |
| 332. | 11/7/2020 “It seems that the Democrats in many states fear transparency and openness for the vote counting process. Why is that? Do they have something to hide? @realDonaldTrump is right to keep fighting to make sure every LEGAL vote is counted.” -Rick Scott, Twitter.com, November 7, 2020 12:10 pm |
| 333. | 11/10/2020 “The reality is that Democrats across the country have created an electoral system that Americans believe is not fair. As in my Senate race in 2018, we see Supervisors of Elections, in largely Democratic strongholds, refuse to comply with state and federal laws that exist to prevent fraud… Contrary to what many in the media say, while it may be relatively uncommon, there is indeed real-life voter fraud in America, and it is consequential.” -Rick Scott, “Sen. Rick Scott: COVID changed everything this year – including voting. Here’s how we restore trust,” foxnews.com, November 10, 2020 |
| 334. | 11/10/2020 “When states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin started changing their election laws on the fly, I predicted an electoral crisis that would cause mass confusion and distrust.” -Rick Scott, “Sen. Rick Scott: COVID changed everything this year – including voting. Here’s how we restore trust,” foxnews.com, November 10, 2020 |
| 335. | 11/10/2020 “The coronavirus pandemic changed everything this year, including how we vote. We saw an unprecedented amount of mail-in voting across the nation. Currently, the process for mail-in voting varies by state, with different deadlines for requesting, returning and receiving mailed ballots. States like Florida handled absentee voting well and produced a timely result… Contrast that with states like Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia that are still processing mail-in ballots days after Election Day, causing confusion and distrust in the system. This patchwork approach to mail-in voting clearly isn’t working. The American people deserve a result on Election Day that they can trust. They can’t wait weeks or months to find out the results of an election.” -Rick Scott, “Sen. Rick Scott: COVID changed everything this year – including voting. Here’s how we restore trust,” foxnews.com, November 10, 2020 |
| 336. | 12/16/2020 “People don’t have enough information, but it’s so simplistic when you hear about people who are dead that vote, people that don’t live in the state that vote. You hear all these things, and there’s no recourse… Clearly we can’t let this go on for the next election.” -Rick Scott via CNBC Television, “Senate holds a hearing on examining irregularities in the 2020 election — 12/16/2020,” YouTube.com, December 16, 2020 |
| 337. | 11/22/2020 “We MUST protect the integrity of our elections and preserve our democracy. I will keep fighting to make sure that we restore the trust and security of our election systems. I introduced the VOTER Act to create uniform standards for mail-in voting.” -Rick Scott, Twitter.com, November 22, 2020 2:01 pm |
| 338. | 11/25/2020 “This election has shown we need major reforms to our election systems, including Voter ID laws across the nation, to protect against fraud and rebuild the American people’s trust in fair outcomes.” -Rick Scott, Twitter.com, November 25, 2020 5:44 pm |
| 339. | 12/2/2020 “Iowa Democrat Rita Hart is skipping the state’s legal process and appealing her loss to the House of Representatives, controlled by Democrats and @SpeakerPelosi. They’re trying to steal the election from @millermeeks and doing it right out in the open!” [Note: This tweet linked to an article titled, “Iowa Democrat to Challenge 6-Vote Loss in Appeal to US House.”] -Rick Scott, Twitter.com, December 2, 2020 6:25 pm |
| 340. | 12/11/2020 “Democrat @RitaHartIA admitted that she’s bypassing Iowa law and appealing to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat House of Representatives because it’s the only way she could ‘get the result that we need.’ Democrats are trying to steal this election right out in the open.” -Rick Scott, Twitter.com, December 11, 2020 11:06 am |
| 341. | 1/6/2021 “The situation in Pennsylvania is of particular concern to me, and I will likely vote to sustain the objection to their slate of electors. The actions of the Governor’s Administration and the courts in Pennsylvania pose a serious threat to the integrity of future elections. The Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania, along with state courts, made a decision to allow votes to be counted that came in after election day, even if they did not have a postmark, in defiance of state law. This is absurd, and cannot be tolerated. It also appears that Pennsylvania enacted policies in direct conflict with its own state constitution, which is also unacceptable. We simply cannot tolerate partisan political attempts to change the rules and tip the scales in our elections. In October, Supreme Court Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas warned that the reckless actions of Pennsylvania’s Governor and Secretary of State might result in ‘serious post-election problems’ and they were right. Both of these matters are still pending at the United States Supreme Court and it would be prudent for Congress to object to Pennsylvania’s electors until these important constitutional questions are resolved.” -Rick Scott, “Sen. Rick Scott Fights to Defend Free and Fair Elections,” rickscott.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 342. | 1/12/2021 “What’s important to me is election integrity. They didn’t follow their own laws [in Pennsylvania] and I’m fed up with that… I’m tired of what’s going on in this country where what we sit here and we watch when people don’t follow the law, and then what happens afterwards? We say, oh, let’s go, let’s go. Just, let’s do an investigation afterwards and nothing happens… No, we have got to start standing up to make sure everybody in this country believes these elections are fair. In Pennsylvania, they did not follow their laws. And that’s wrong. And I am very comfortable what I did [contesting the certification of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes].” -Rick Scott, “Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) Defends Objecting To Pennsylvania’s Electors,” radio.foxnews.com, January 12, 2021 |
| 343. | 2/25/2021 “What we saw this past election was confusion and chaos caused by inconsistent standards and last minute changes to established election laws by state officials and activist judges. It’s now more clear than ever that there is a serious need for major reforms to our election systems.” -Rick Scott, “Sen. Rick Scott, Colleagues Introduce the Save Democracy Act to Restore Confidence in our Elections,” rickscott.senate.gov, February 25, 2021 |
| 31. SENATOR TIM SCOTT (R-SC) | |
|---|---|
| 344. | 11/6/2020 “Every legally cast vote should be and will be counted, period. Any voting irregularities and allegations of fraud must be thoroughly vetted and investigated, and I would encourage anyone with concrete evidence of either to come forward. This week has shown us that transparency must be increased – for example, the situation in Philadelphia limiting poll watchers’ access is concerning. I also hope we learn lessons on making this process more efficient; if we can put a man on the moon, we can get all our non-military votes counted within 72 hours.” -Tim Scott, “Senator Scott Statement on Election,” scott.senate.gov, November 6, 2020 |
| 345 | 1/5/2021 “We cannot move forward without looking back and scrutinizing the issues that led to millions of Americans losing trust in our election system. While every election has a modicum of fraud, the circumstances around the pandemic led multiple states to make rushed and perhaps ill-planned changes to their election systems weeks ahead of the presidential election. Simply put, Congress needs to act in a bipartisan fashion to examine the missteps—intentional or not—made this year in state legislatures across the country.” -Tim Scott, “Scott to Introduce Bill Establishing Election Integrity Commission,” scott.senate.gov, January 5, 2021 |
| 32. SENATOR THOM TILLIS (R-NC) | |
|---|---|
| 346 | 1/6/2021 “The American people should have full faith in our election system, which is why I led the passage of voter ID legislation in North Carolina and why I supported President Trump’s right to call for recounts and bring challenges to the courts. I share the concerns of many Americans regarding the lack of security of widespread mail-in voting and the partisan actions of activist Democratic lawyers who succeeded in making questionable changes to the voting process while Americans were already casting their ballots. Even if it wasn’t enough to change the outcome of the election, irregularities and fraud are never acceptable and they should be investigated and prosecuted when appropriate.” -Thom Tillis, “Tillis Statement On Electoral College Certification,” tillis.senate.gov, January 6, 2021 |
| 33. SENATOR TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL) | |
|---|---|
| 347. | 11/5/2020 “The election results are out of control. It’s like the whistle has blown, the game is over, and the players have gone home, but the referees are suddenly adding touchdowns to the other team’s side of the scoreboard… I’d challenge that as a coach, and @realDonaldTrump is right to challenge that as a candidate. The American people deserve transparency and to know the integrity of our votes are preserved. #Election2020″ -Tommy Tuberville, Twitter.com, November 5, 2020 9:17 pm |
| 348. | 1/2/2021 “We’ve heard the concerns of millions of Americans – including voters from all corners of my home state of Alabama – about the way the Presidential Election was conducted… It’s especially concerning that some states allegedly failed to handle the election according to their own duly enacted state laws. Nothing is more important or more deserving of scrutiny than the integrity of the rules and processes under which our elections are conducted… I am excited to support @tedcruz’s call for an Electoral Commission with full investigative authority to determine the TRUTH and the FACTS. The purpose is to protect the democratic process, and to ensure Americans have faith that the process is fair and secure in the long run… I will vote to reject electors from disputed states until that commission has an opportunity to conduct its review, which I believe can and should happen before Inauguration Day… All members of Congress should be committed to ensuring elections are conducted consistent with the Constitution and federal and state laws.” -Tommy Tuberville, Twitter.com, January 2, 2021 3:24 pm |
| 349. | 1/2/2021 “The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities. Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes. And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%)… Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” -Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, “Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville,” cruz.senate.gov, January 2, 2020 |
| 350. | 1/5/2021 “Tomorrow afternoon I will join Senator Ted Cruz in objecting to Electoral College results from Arizona, and I am carefully considering additional states that may require my objection… In our country, elections are generally governed by the individual states, but there are serious questions about whether, for example, Arizona’s electors were selected in accordance with the duly enacted laws of the State of Arizona, which is a requirement of the Constitution… It is critical to ensure the voices of the millions of Americans who voted for President Trump are heard and not diminished by voter fraud or election irregularities.” -Tommy Tuberville, Twitter.com, January 5, 2021 6:36 pm |
| 251. | 1/7/2021 “The integrity of our elections is vital to our country. I have serious concerns that the states of Arizona and Pennsylvania did not act in accordance with their own duly enacted laws when conducting this election. Because I promised to raise these concerns on behalf of my constituents, I voted against seating the electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania.” -Tommy Tuberville, “Tuberville Statement on Electoral Vote Certification,” tuberville.senate.gov, January 7, 2021 |
| 34. SENATOR ROGER WICKER (R-MS) | |
|---|---|
| 352. | 11/6/2020 “Americans should have confidence in our voting system and that all ballots have been submitted correctly and legally. This is precisely what President Trump and his legal team are seeking. Any allegations of voting irregularities, including ballot tampering or voting by ineligible persons, should be investigated and adjudicated to the fullest extent of the law. It is essential to our democracy and the integrity of our elections that this process be allowed to play out in full view of the American people, and that election observers from both sides of the aisle be allowed to participate. Neither the media nor states should rush to declare a winner in closely contested states until all legally-cast ballots have been counted and all legal challenges and required recounts have been resolved.” -Roger Wicker, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Steven Palazzo, Trent Kelly, Michael Guest, “Wicker, Hyde-smith, Palazzo, Kelly, Guest Call For Transparency And Accountability In 2020 Election Count,” hydesmith.senate.gov, November 6, 2020 |
Note: Statements undermining the legitimacy of the 2020 election were only found for Republican senators. It should be noted that Democrats have made statements questioning the legitimacy of past presidential elections and have previously lodged objections to electoral vote certifications. Senators listed in the chart above were either in office at the time of the election or sworn into office on January 3, 2021.
References
| ↑1 | PBS NewsHour, “Exhaustive Fact Check Finds Little Evidence of Voter Fraud, But 2020’s ‘Big Lie’ Lives On,” pbs.org, December 21, 2021 |
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| ↑2 | Caroline Linton and Melissa Quinn, “Key Republican Senators Withdraw Objections to Electoral College Count After Capitol Siege,” cbsnews.com, January 7, 2021 |