Democrats and even some Republicans warn against a challenge, despite the precedent set by Boxer. In an interview with CNN, Boxer said that the circumstances this year are completely different, when Trump and his allies want to overthrow a national election result, than when she was with the then Democratic Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones in Ohio was to object to the loss of Kerry. .
“Our intention was not to overthrow the election in any way. Our intention was to focus on the oppression of voters in Ohio,” said the retired California Democrat, who said she objected to her proudest moment in the Senate. ‘s floor was. “They’re talking about the vote that Donald Trump stole the presidency. It’s not even a close comparison.”
Congress will count the votes of the Electoral College at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, representing Trump’s final chance to try to overthrow the election result he lost to Biden. In fact, Trump’s Republican allies have virtually no chance of changing the outcome, only to delay Biden’s inevitable confirmation as the election college winner and next president.
“I believe we have several senators, and the question is not whether or not, but how many,” Brooks said last week.
Brooks said Republicans are preparing to object to Biden’s victory in as many as six states, which would force a dozen-hour debate on the House and Senate floors, which would undermine Biden’s victory in a political circus. would change.
IDP senator leaves door open for objection
However, to force a vote to challenge a state’s election results, a senator must agree in writing with a member of Congress to object to the results. McConnell, who acknowledged Biden’s victory, warned his conference not to join the House’s GOP effort and to force the Senate’s GOP conference to take a politically toxic vote on whether to join him Trump wants to side or not.
But Tuberville, who beat Trump’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the Republican primary in Alabama, left the door open last week for objections to the election college result. Tuberville’s comments prompted Trump to tweet several stories about the new Alabama senator that McConnell could possibly defy and talk to him.
“He said, ‘You made me the most popular politician in the United States,'” Trump added. “He’s great.”
Should Tuberville or another senator join the House’s objections, the two chambers would separate two hours from each state’s objection before voting. Because the Democrats control the House, the attempt in fact has no chance of succeeding, and even in a Republican-controlled Senate, many Republicans have said there is no widespread fraud.
“In the Senate, it will shoot like a dog,” said South Dakota Senator John Dune, Republican no. 2, said last week. “I just think it does not make sense to put everyone through this if you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.”
Previous objections failed without Senate support
The joint session to count the Electoral College’s votes on January 6 will be chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, who attended the White House meeting with Trump and Republicans of the House on Monday, and raised questions about how he will acts to be in the awkward position of Biden’s victory over his own presidential card.
This is the same position that former Vice President Al Gore faced in 2001 after his fleeting loss to Bush, which amounts to a controversial story in Florida. House Democrats protested during the vote against the Florida result, but no senator objected, and the attempt was dead.
This is also what happened in 2017, when a group of House Democrats objected to Trump’s victory in several states, citing Russian electoral interference and problems with voter oppression. No senators joined the House, however, and Biden – who presided over the session in his role as Senate president – voiced the objections and rejected the objections, declaring Trump the winner.
“We have been trying to draw attention to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s efforts to undermine and sabotage the US election,” said Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, one of the Democrats, who in 2017 raised an objection to the floor made. “There is certainly far more evidence of Vladimir Putin’s cyber attacks on the DNC and the (Hillary) Clinton campaign and attempts to manipulate American public opinion through social media than there was any fraud or corruption in the 2020 election. ‘
House GOP leaders have recently cited Democratic objections, including Boxer and House Democrats’ objections in 2017, to justify contesting Biden’s victory next month.
“If any Republican has done that, it’s clearly not the first time this has been done,” Steve Scalise, whip of the House of Minorities, which Biden has not yet recognized as an election, said last week. “Democrats have objected to every Republican president in the last three terms.”
‘People wanted to strangle me’
Boxer said Tubbs Jones, who died in 2008, convinced her to join the 2005 objection by pointing out to her the problems that had occurred with Ohio’s votes, including hours of long ballot boxes, broken voting machines and high rates for rejecting preliminary ballots in the state’s African-American communities.
“This objection has no hope or even a hint of overthrowing the president’s victory,” Tubbs Jones said on the House floor when the two chambers were separated for debate. “But it is a necessary, timely and appropriate opportunity to review and rectify the most precious process in our democracy.”
In the Senate, Boxer’s fellow Democrats spoke in support of problems with voter oppression. But when the time came to vote, only Boxer cast a vote to uphold the protest. She lost 74-1.
In the House, the vote against the objection was 267-31, and Ohio’s votes were counted.
“It was one of my proudest moments, even when I was standing alone,” Boxer told CNN. “I was very unpopular in the Senate that day – people wanted to strangle me.”
In the weeks after objecting to the Electoral College, Boxer and Tubbs Jones joined forces with the then Sen. Hillary Clinton to introduce new suffrage legislation, although it has not progressed in the Republican Senate.
“Looking back, I think we were so predictable, because after that it got even worse with the oppression of the voters,” Boxer said. “We were hoping we would take a stand for legislation, but we would never be able to do that in the Republican Senate. We just could not get it out.”
CNN’s Manu Raju, Ali Zaslav, Daniella Diaz and Kaitlan Collins and Sarah Westwood contributed to this report.