Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on Jan. 3 challenged the seating of representatives from six states where election results are contested during the opening day of the 117th Congress.
The Republican from the Lone Star State made the objection on the House floor against delegations from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin before the swearing-in of newly elected and returning members.
“Such allegations—if true—raise significant doubts about the elections of at least some of the members of the United States House of Representatives that, if not formally addressed, could cast a dark cloud of suspicion over the validity of this body for the duration of the 117th Congress,” Roy said.
“After all, those representatives were elected through the very same systems—with the same ballot procedures, with the same signature validations, with the same broadly applied decisions of executive and judicial branch officials—as were the electors chosen for the President of the United States under the laws of those states, which have become the subject of national controversy.
“And while the legislatures of those states have sent us no formal indication that the results of these elections should not be honored by this body, it would confound basic human reason if the presidential results were to face objection while the congressional results of the same process escaped without public scrutiny.”
The group, led by Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), said participating in such efforts would amount to “unconstitutionally [inserting] Congress into the center of the presidential election process,” which would “steal” power from the people and states.
They said Congress had no authority to make value judgments about presidential electors, nor the discretion to “disqualify electors based on its own finding that fraud occurred in that state’s election.”
A growing group of Republican House members and senators have announced their intention to challenge Electoral College votes in several states where election results are disputed over allegations of irregularities and voter fraud. Republicans, in the lead-up to Jan. 6, have been picking sides in a last-ditch effort to ensure that allegations of voter fraud are transparently and independently resolved.
Twelve senators have expressed their intent to participate in the effort, and at least 50 House members have committed to objecting to the contested votes on Jan. 6, according to a tally by The Epoch Times. Meanwhile, at least two dozen lawmakers from both houses of Congress say they will not participate in the efforts.
Allegations about election fraud have been repeatedly denied by leading election officials and lawmakers, while critics and members of the media have characterized the claims as “baseless.” So far, a large proportion of cases filed by the Trump campaign and its allies have been thrown out by judges for procedural reasons, including by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, allegations that election rules and safeguards were changed or relaxed by state officials in violation of the U.S. Constitution and state election laws haven’t been fully scrutinized in state or federal courts. Several cases are currently sitting at the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking a determination on whether state officials or courts exceeded their powers when they modified election rules during the pandemic.
