- Sen. Mitt Romney said it would “madness” for Republicans to protest the Electoral College vote that would certify president-elect Joe Biden’s win.
- “We have a process, recounts are appropriate, going to the court is approp & pursuing every legal avenue is appropriate, but trying to get electors not to do what the people voted to do is madness,” Romney said.
- Since the election, President Donald Trump’s campaign as well as a number of Republicans have waged several lawsuits in multiple states seeking to overturn the results.
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Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah ripped into Republicans who are threatening to protest the Electoral College vote calling any attempt “madness.”
“This is madness. We have a process, recounts are appropriate, going to the court is approp & pursuing every legal avenue is appropriate, but trying to get electors not to do what the people voted to do is madness,” Romney told Frank Thorp of NBC News.
A spokesperson for Romney confirmed his statement to Business Insider.
President Donald Trump’s campaign as well as a number of Republicans have waged lawsuits in multiple states seeking to overturn the results. President-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner after winning enough states to secure more the 270 needed electoral votes. It took weeks for Trump to allow Biden’s transition.
“It would be saying, ‘Look, let’s not follow the vote of the people, let’s instead do it what we want, that would not be the way a democratic republic ought to work,” Romney said.
On Tuesday, The Supreme Court rejected a request from Rep. Mike Kelly and a group of Pennsylvania state legislators to block the state's certification of its election results.
December 8 is the"safe harbor" deadline, which means that while states are not required to certify their results by then if they do so those results are final and must be accepted by Congress. December 14 is the date set for the Electoral College to meet to formally certify Biden's win.
After electors in each state meet to certify their results, they send certificates of their vote to their state's chief election official, the National Archives, and the current president of the Senate, Business Insider's Grace Panetta reported.
On January 6th, the current Vice President will preside over a joint session of Congress to finalize the vote. If no member objects to the results in writing, then the results would be officially certified.
Some members of the House of Representatives who are Trump allies have said they would challenge some state's electoral votes during the joint session. However, both a member of the House and a member of the Senate must vote to challenge a state's electors, and if that happens both the House and Senate would have to deliberate on whether to accept the electors or not.