Mast says he’ll vote to reject election results

Congressman joins GOP contingent; no word yet from Rubio or Scott

U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, who has occasionally defied Republican Party orthodoxy, says he plans to join a contingent of his party’s colleagues in the House of Representatives and vote against certifying the election of President-elect Joe Biden.

Mast is the only Republican who represents part of Palm Beach County, most of which is represented by Democrats. Broward has no Republican representation in the House.

Two other important Florida voices, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, haven’t revealed their plans. Both harbor presidential ambitions, which means neither one wants to run afoul of President Donald Trump, who will still hold enormous influence over Republican voters even after he leaves office on Jan. 20.

Biden won the Electoral College, 306 to 232 — the same number Trump won in 2016 and called it a “massive landslide.” On Monday, Trump attacked Republicans who weren’t going along with efforts to challenge the election results. Objecting to Biden’s victory won’t change the election results.

Despite the widespread

conspiracy theories circulating on the internet, and echoed by Trump and some politicians, no credible evidence has surfaced to support the claims.

Mast announced his decision Sunday on Twitter, moments before he was sworn in to his third term in Congress.

“I will oppose certifying the Presidential election results on January 6th!” Mast wrote.

In follow-up tweets, he sought to justify the move by pointing to the investigation that led to Trump’s impeachment. He called it a “sham impeachment investigation” which he asserted was “solely for the purpose of delegitimizing the President.”

He said, “millions of Americans have important questions about voter fraud, but Congress refuses to conduct an investigation.” Those questions have been addressed in many of the 60 court cases challenging election results, none of which found evidence, and in the certifications of election results by Republican elected officials in some of the most closely contested states.

Still, Mast said, “It’s clear that Congress only intends to act when it will hurt President Trump, and I will not go along with this farce. Therefore, in the absence of a Congressional investigation into fraud in the 2020 Presidential election, I will oppose certifying the results.”

Mast has departed from the party line in the past. Mast, who as an Army sergeant in 2010 lost both legs and a finger when a bomb exploded under him in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has supported more restrictions on civilian gun purchases than most Republicans and he’s been a champion of environmental concerns in his northern Palm Beach-Martin-St. Lucie county district.

U.S. Rep. Scott Franklin, R-Lakeland, who was elected to his first term in November, cited the Democrats’ objections to previous elections in explaining his intention to contest the vote. Those efforts by Democrats in some previous objections weren’t taken seriously by anyone, and unlike this year’s challenge, weren’t even supported by the presidential candidates they were purportedly aimed at helping. In 2004, for example, a handful of Democrats wanted to draw attention to voter suppression.

Franklin said he wanted a hearing to l ook i nto supposed “irregularities” in the 2020 election. “Following the election, there has been a lack of transparency in counting votes in several states that merit closer scrutiny” Franklin said in a released statement. “For that reason, I will join my Republican colleagues in challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election to ensure that there is a fair election process that counts every legally casted vote.”

Other Republican members of Congress from South and Central Florida haven’t disclosed their plans, though U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz, R-St. Augustine Beach, appears likely to join the Republicans voting against the certification of the Electoral College.

In a series of posts on Twitter on Saturday, Waltz noted that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., objected to the certification of Ohio’s Electoral College votes in 2005 after the 2004 election, in which George W. Bush won reelection. He also cited the dozens of Democrats who objected to Electoral College votes after the 2000 and 2016 elections.

“So, when Dems object, they’re protecting our democracy but when we do, we’re destroying it?,” Waltz wrote.

U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, who just began his his first term representing Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, said Friday on CNN that he wouldn’t make up his mind until after the debate in the House.

“There is a pretty high bar that those that are objecting to the results will have to pass, but since I’m to sit there as basically a juror, I will sit as a juror and I’ll listen to the evidence and then I’ll make up my mind once I listen to the evidence,” he said. As of Friday, he said he hadn’t seen evidence that Biden shouldn’t be sworn in.

Because of the objections from Trump loyalists, the House and Senate will debate the certification on Wednesday. But it won’t go anywhere; Democrats hold a majority in the House and some Republicans have forcefully denounced the idea of the objection as a threat to the democratic process. And in the Senate, less than half the Republicans support the idea of a challenge, which is opposed by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Rubio and Scott haven’t taken positions.

“Senator Scott is reviewing his options and will announce his decision at the appropriate time,” a spokeswoman for Scott said Monday by email.

On Friday, Rubio told told reporters that he wouldn’t discuss the issue until Wednesday.

Stephen Gaskill, a resident of Palm Beach County who is president of the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus, dismissed Mast’s move. “I’m sure he thinks he’s a patriot. Resign,” Gaskill wrote on Twitter.

Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, said all Florida lawmakers should “follow Congressman Mast’s courageous lead.”

Barnett said Palm Beach County residents who voted for Trump “will not have our voices disenfranchised” because of fraud he said occurred outside Florida. Trump received 43.2% of the vote in Palm Beach County and 51.2% of the statewide vote. Barnett’s statement didn’t offer any proof of fraud.

Club 45 USA, a large, Palm-Beach County-based political club formed to support Trump — and led by leading members of the county Republican Party — told its members in an email blast Monday that Rubio and Scott “are presently standing with Mitt Romney and are opposing” the effort to reject the election results.

The club, whose president is Joe Budd, the elected Republican state committeeman for Palm Beach County, asked members to call the senators offices, and to have family members “and likeminded friends” do the same.

“Complaining, worrying helplessly, expressing frustration, posting memes and commenting between fellow patriots is fun, but has little or no impact on who will run this country come January 20. Calling our two Senators could have an impact on the final outcome of the election,” the club said.

Leading Republican voices in recent days have condemned the effort to challenge the results.

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the House, wrote a lengthy memo to colleagues warning them that objecting to the Electoral College results would “set an exceptionally dangerous precedent.”

Another seven House

Republicans said Sunday that “to unconstitutionally insert Congress into the center of the presidential election process — would amount to stealing power away from the people and the states. It would, in effect, replaced the electoral college with Congress.”

They wrote that those who object to certifying results are setting a precedent they’ll come to regret.

“Republican presidential candidates have won the national popular vote only once in the last 32 years. They have therefore depended on the electoral college for nearly all presidential victories in the last generation. If we perpetuate the notion that Congress may disregard certified electoral votes — based solely on its own assessment that one or more states mishandled the presidential election — we will be delegitimizing the very system that led Donald Trump to victory in 2016, and that could prove the only path to victory in 2024.”

Representatives for Waltz, Gimenez, U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami-Dade County Republican, and U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, R-Clermont, didn’t respond to requests for comment Monday about their boss’ positions. Neither did Maria Elvira Salazar, who would have been sworn in as a new Miami congresswoman on Sunday with the rest of the House, but wasn’t able to attend because she has COVID-19.

U.S. Rep. Brian Mast