GOP Sen. Ben Sasse Blasts Sen. Josh Hawley’s ‘Dangerous’ Decision To Object To Electoral College Vote

Following Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-Missouri) announcement on Wednesday that he would be objecting to certifying the Electoral College vote count on January 6, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) blasted President Donald Trump and his allies on Facebook, writing that continuously pushing to reverse the election results is “playing with fire.”

 

“Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage,” Sasse wrote late Wednesday night, hours after Hawley had announced his intention to challenge President-elect Joe Biden‘s victory in Pennsylvania and possibly other states. Other contested states include Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.

“Having been in a private conversation with two dozen of my colleagues over the past few weeks, it seems useful to explain in public why I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election – and why I have been urging my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy,” Sasse wrote.

Sasse added, “The president and his allies are playing with fire. They have been asking – first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress – to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes. If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn’t, and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.”

Earlier Wednesday, Hawley became the first senator to declare that he would object when Congress counts the Electoral College votes next week, which would force lawmakers in both chambers to vote on whether to accept the results of Biden’s victory.

Sasse said that there is no constitutional basis for Congress to dismiss Electoral College votes on January 6. He also claimed that a challenge, in this instance, lacks a “real basis” and denied the narrative that evidence exists of voter fraud “so widespread that it could have changed the outcome of the presidential election.”

“Since the Electoral College Act of 1887 was passed into law in the aftermath of the Civil War, not a single electoral vote has ever been thrown out by the Congress,” he said, adding that “one goofy senator attempted this maneuver after George W. Bush won reelection in 2004, but her anti-democratic play was struck down by her Senate colleagues in a shaming vote of 74-1.”

“For President-Elect Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College victory to be overturned, President Trump would need to flip multiple states. But not a single state is in legal doubt,” Sasse continued.