More than a dozen Republicans in the U.S. Senate and over a hundred in the house are planning to challenge the presidential electoral vote at a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. Federal lawmakers from Maine say that effort will fail.
Historically, the joint session is brief, as state delegations vote to ratify votes cast by their state’s electors. But not this year. Ardent supporters of President Donald Trump plan to challenge the votes in several states in an attempt to have him declared the winner.
Democratic U.S Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District says that will not happen.
“They are casting a lot of shadows. It’s kind of turning themselves into paper tigers. It’s going to fail,” he says. “People should listen to them and judge for themselves whether they think these individuals have a serious critique or truly believe what they are doing or saying or whether or not they are just making a show of it.”
Golden says he hopes that the bitter fighting over the election will not carry forward in the new Congress, as there are too many urgent issues that need to be addressed in a bipartisan way.
Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine says the effort is a waste of time.
Collins says voters have clearly decided that Democrat Joe Biden has won the election, and the courts have rejected claims of election fraud by President Trump. She says attempts to have Congress overrule the state electors will go nowhere.
“I am eager to get on with work of the Senate and to acknowledge the reality that President-elect Biden is going to be the next president of the United States,” she says.
Collins also says the president was wrong to call the Georgia Secretary of State and pressure him to, as Trump put it, “find” more votes.
“The wrong way is to pressure state officials and that is what the president did in this latest phone call,” she says.
