Here’s What Happened with the Electoral College
Since the 2016 election, Donald Trump has careened from crisis to crisis, undermining our democracy at every stage. In doing so, he’s been enabled by Republicans in Congress, and this week [Jan. 6], we’ve truly reached a new and dangerous low. With Trump still denying the results of the election, his loyalists in Congress are now doing his bidding in a doomed attempt to ignore the people’s will and overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
They won’t succeed — we won’t let them — but you deserve to know what’s happening and just how dangerous this is.
For months, Trump has pushed conspiracy theories and made desperate last-minute attempts to hold onto power despite losing both the popular vote and Electoral College in November’s election by a landslide. His legal team and supporters have lost at least 60 lawsuits in the courts. His own Department of Justice found no evidence of voter fraud. But nonetheless, on Jan. 3, we heard graphic evidence of the president pressuring Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State to “find” him the votes he needed to overturn the results.
On Jan. 6, Congress attempted to undertake its constitutional task to certify the Electoral College results — literally counting the votes that have already been certified by 50 states. This is normally a ceremonial task, since Congress doesn’t elect the president, the voters do, but not
this year.
A dozen Republican Senators — including Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley — and over one hundred Members of Congress have pledged to reject those results in a last-ditch effort to throw out Americans’ votes and steal the election for Donald Trump.
It goes against the oath they swore. It goes against the very notion of free and fair elections. It goes against our Constitution. It goes against our democracy.
All of that is abhorrent and anti-democratic. It’s also deeply hypocritical. At this time last year, these same Republicans refused to hold Trump accountable during the impeachment for abusing his power, claiming on principle that ‘the voters should decide.’ Well, the voters decided — and Joe Biden won — but since it wasn’t in the GOP’s favor, Republicans no longer want the voters to decide either. So much for principle.
Never mind that the same election these Republicans falsely claim was rigged, was the very election in which they took office. Apparently, that part of the election was just fine.
You may find yourself asking, why? Why are they willing to risk their reputation, their duty, their country to do this? I’ll tell you: a mixture of personal cowardice and political ambition to placate and satiate Trump’s far-right base which has been fed a steady diet of nothing but conspiracy theories.
When you excuse every illegal, unconstitutional and corrupt act by a man patently unfit for office, it leads you to the wildly antidemocratic moment we witnessed on the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. It takes your breath away. I know they won’t succeed with their last authoritarian gasp. We won’t let them. But we have to ask ourselves: what about four years from now? And after that?
This is not okay, and we cannot tolerate it. It’s become clear that the fight to defend our democracy did not end on Nov. 3. Far from it. We must let these Republicans know that we will hold them accountable.
Adam Schiff is the U.S. Representative for California’s 28th congressional district since 2013.