Cheney, Lummis split over Electoral College challenge
Cheney, Lummis split over Electoral College challenge
By Tom Coulter
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via Wyoming News Exchange
CHEYENNE — Two of Wyoming’s three federal delegates have taken different stances regarding largely unsubstantiated concerns over the 2020 presidential election leading up to a count Wednesday in Congress of the Electoral College’s certified vote results.
The joint session of Congress marks the final step in certifying Joe Biden as the next U.S. president, following the Electoral College’s certification of his victory by a 306-to-232 margin over current President Donald Trump in mid-December.
While typically viewed as a procedural formality at the end of the election process, this year’s vote count could be more eventful than usual, partially through a planned effort by 11 Republican senators – including newly sworn-in Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo. – to reject electors from several tightly contested states that went for Biden unless an emergency 10-day audit of the election is conducted in those states.
Led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the group announced its plan in a statement Saturday, arguing the 2020 election “featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities,” while providing no specific evidence of such incidents.
“We are not naïve,” reads the joint statement issued by Lummis and her Republican colleagues. “We fully expect most, if not all, Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise. But support of election integrity should not be a partisan issue.
“A fair and credible audit – conducted expeditiously and completed well before Jan. 20 – would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next president.”
Lummis’ backing of the effort was in contrast to the stance of Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s sole delegate in the House of Representatives. In a Facebook post Monday, Cheney said refusing to count certified electors “would be establishing a tyranny of Congress and stealing power from the states and the people in those states.”
“Objecting to these electoral slates would unavoidably assert that Congress has the authority to overturn elections and overrule state and federal courts,” Cheney said. “That would set an exceptionally dangerous precedent, threatening to steal states’ explicit constitutional responsibility for choosing the president and bestowing it instead on Congress. This is directly at odds with the Constitution’s clear text and our core beliefs as Republicans.”
Cheney added she was “not happy” about the result of the presidential election, but cautioned against the broader implications of potential objections to the already-certified results.
“This vote in Congress is not about President Trump,” Cheney said. “It’s about following the Constitution and recognizing that the authority here rests with the states and the people, not the federal government.”
Asked about Cheney’s Facebook post Tuesday, a spokesperson for Lummis said the new senator “wholeheartedly agrees that Congress does not have the authority to overturn state presidential election results.”
“That is not her intention in supporting the electoral commission. The intention is to shed light on any election fraud that did occur,” Lummis spokesman Darin Miller said in an email. “Sen. Lummis and her colleagues intend to use their debate time to raise these concerns, so it can be dealt with in the states, and by the state legislatures, where that constitutional authority resides.”
While Cheney and Lummis have offered statements on the last-ditch efforts encouraged by Trump to challenge the election results, Wyoming’s most senior delegate in Washington, Sen. John Barrasso, had not made it clear as of Tuesday whether he plans to join Lummis and the other GOP senators in contesting the results.
Laura Mengelkamp, a spokesperson for Barrasso, said the senator plans to issue a statement on the matter, declining to answer questions from a WTE reporter Tuesday.
Meanwhile, leading officials from the Wyoming Republican Party, along with more than 25 state lawmakers, urged each of the state’s federal delegates to reject Electoral College votes in six contested states, all of which went for Biden, in a letter sent to them last weekend.
“This is not about winning and losing. This is about being on the right side of history,” Wyoming GOP Chairman Frank Eathorne wrote in the letter. “If the efforts are unsuccessful, Joe Biden will have to enter the White House with a well-earned stain of illegitimacy, which will hamper his efforts to advance the Democrats’ socialist agenda.”
However, several prominent Republican lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have cautioned their colleagues in recent weeks against objecting to the vote count. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, co-authored a Washington Post opinion piece last weekend with all other living former defense secretaries, stating “the time for questioning the results has passed.”
“Acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinates – political appointees, officers and civil servants – are each bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate the entry into office of the incoming administration, and to do so wholeheartedly,” states the opinion piece published Sunday. “They must also refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election or hinder the success of the new team.”
The vote count in Congress will occur uninterrupted, unless members from both the House and the Senate object to the electoral college slates, a scenario that appears likely. The GOP challenge, however, is widely expected to fail, given Democrats’ majority in the House and the lack of support from some Senate Republicans.