Loeffler is among a growing number of Republican Senators who pledge to challenge the Electoral College results Wednesday in what will be only the third time in over a century that Congress has entertained such a debate.
Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) will join 140 House Republicans and 12 other Republican Senators in challenging President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College victory when Congress meets to certify the results Wednesday.
“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,” she said in a statement released Monday.
Loeffler, locked in an extremely close runoff election against Democratic challenger Rev. Raphael Warnock today, looks to have made a last-ditch appeal for Trump’s base to shore up her numbers. Sen. David Perdue, the embattled Republican incumbent for Georgia’s other seat, had already voiced his support for the challenge.
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“This is something that the American people demand right now. You heard in the last section that there are huge irregularities in Georgia. They need to be investigated. And they need to be corrected, in my opinion,” he told Fox News Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo, according to The Hill.
Both Georgia Senators have previously avoided openly supporting Trump’s crusade to challenge the election results.
Since November, Donald Trump has disputed the presidential election results, making baseless claims of widespread fraud and insisting that the vote was “rigged.” Despite losing dozens of legal challenges, recounts that confirmed their tallies, and election experts repudiating the fraud claims, Congressional Republicans are prepared to debate the challenges—making Wednesday only the third time since 1887 the body has done so.
This debate is likely to drag what is usually a formality out for hours as GOP members push to create an election review commission. The challenge must garner majority support in both the House and Senate.
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All this comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s inflammatory call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the weekend. The president repeatedly pressured Raffensperger to “find” extra votes that would delegitimize President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the state last November, adding weight to his electoral college challenge. Loeffler is expected Wednesday to also dispute her state’s presidential election results, despite three recounts having already been conducted.
Gabriel Sterling, voting system implementation manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, debunked Trump’s fraud allegations about the state’s voting system during a press conference Monday evening. Standing in front of a poster titled Claim vs. Fact that listed Trump’s assertions, he proceeded to refute the allegations line by line and denounced Trump for depressing confidence in the democratic process.
“There is no shredding of ballots going on. That’s not real. It’s not happening,” Sterling said. “This is all easily provably false, yet the president persists, and by doing so, undermines Georgians’ faith in the election systems, especially Republican Georgians in this case.”
Meanwhile, Trump went off the rails at a final rally on behalf of Georgia’s senators, turning the focus from the runoff which will determine control of the Senate to his own failed election once again.
“They’re not going to take this White House. We’re going to fight like hell, I’ll tell you right now,” Trump told the crowd.
Given the Democratic majority in the House and the number of Republican lawmakers who have criticized the plan as a waste of time, it is highly unlikely the challenge will successfully overturn election results.
Emiene Wright Emiene Wright is associate editor at Cardinal & PIne. Before that she was on the 24-hour news desk of the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press, and her writing has been featured in Crisis, the Charlotte Observer, and Our State magazine.
