Mike Pence Criticizes 2020 Election Making False Claims Of ‘Voting Irregularities’

Former Vice President Mike Pence criticized the 2020 election on Wednesday in his first written comments since leaving office in January.

Pence said there were “significant voting irregularities” and “numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law” in the 2020 presidential election.

During the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, some rioters called for Pence’s hanging. The former vice president said those events had “deprived the American people of a substantive discussion in Congress about election integrity in America.”

Pence’s remarks were offered in an op-ed published by The Daily Signal, a publication run by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The context was an attack on H.R. 1, a voting rights bill the House passed on Wednesday that Pence said would “increase opportunities for election fraud.”

For months after Joe Biden won the election, former President Donald Trump and his supporters have repeatedly claimed the election results were fraudulent. State officials and courts have since rejected the claims, including a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority that includes three Trump nominees.

Pence also argues in the op-ed that measures included in the voting rights bill, formally known as the For the People Act, would “trample the First Amendment, further erode confidence in our elections, and forever dilute the votes of legally qualified eligible voters.”

“While legislators in many states have begun work on election reform to restore public confidence in state elections, unfortunately, congressional Democrats have chosen to sweep those valid concerns and reforms aside and to push forward a brazen attempt to nationalize elections in blatant disregard of the U.S. Constitution,” Pence writes.

This legislation would expand opportunities to vote by mail, establish electronic voter registration and give the Justice Department more authority to enforce voting rights law.

Biden and his administration have given their support to the bill.

“In the wake of an unprecedented assault on our democracy, a never before seen effort to ignore, undermine, and undo the will of the people, and a newly aggressive attack on voting rights taking place right now all across the country, this landmark legislation is urgently needed to protect the right to vote and the integrity of our elections, and to repair and strengthen American democracy,” the White House said in a statement on Monday.