WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska issued a pointed rebuke Thursday of GOP attempts to object Jan. 6 to the Electoral College tally of the presidential election, warning colleagues against a “dangerous ploy” that could damage the nation’s civic traditions.
Sasse, a potential 2024 presidential contender, posted a lengthy explanation of his views on social media, including a paragraph by paragraph dismantling of allegations of voter fraud in key states won by President-elect Joe Biden. Sasse said he felt compelled to speak “truth” as constituents and those supporting President Donald Trump wanted to know where he stands on the issue.
“I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election,” Sasse wrote. He said he wanted to explain “why I have been urging my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy.”
Trump, the first president to lose a reelection bid in almost 30 years, has attributed his defeat to widespread voter fraud, despite nonpartisan election officials saying there wasn’t any. He has pushed Republican senators to pursue his unfounded charges even though the Electoral College this month cemented Biden’s 306-232 victory and multiple legal efforts to challenge the results have failed.
The missive from Sasse offers the Republican Party a different path for the post-Trump era, in stark contrast to other potential 2024 contenders — most notably, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. — who are leading the challenge during next week’s joint session of Congress.
Hawley became the first GOP senator this week to announce he will raise objections when Congress meets to affirm Biden’s victory in the election, forcing House and Senate votes that are likely to delay — but in no way alter — the final certification of Biden’s win.
Other Republican senators are expected to join Hawley, wary of ceding the spotlight to him as they, too, try to emerge as leaders in a post-Trump era.
Some Republicans in the Democratic-majority House have already said they will object on Trump’s behalf during the Jan. 6 count of electoral votes, and they had needed just a single senator to go along with them to force votes in both chambers.
Sasse took aim at the “swampy” nature of Trump’s fundraising off the election challenge as he outlined his reasons for believing Biden’s electoral win is valid.
“Since Election Day, the president and his allied organizations have raised well over half a billion (billion!) dollars from supporters who have been led to believe that they’re contributing to a ferocious legal defense,” Sasse wrote. “But in reality, they’re mostly just giving the president and his allies a blank check that can go to their super-PACs, their next plane trip, their next campaign or project. That’s not serious governing. It’s swampy politics.”
He put the election challenges being waged by Trump’s legal team in Nebraska terms.
Sasse wrote that he couldn’t “simply allege that the College Football Playoff Selection Committee is ‘on the take’ because they didn’t send the Cornhuskers to the Rose Bowl, and then – after I fail to show evidence that anyone on the Selection Committee is corrupt – argue that we need to investigate because of these pervasive ‘allegations’ of corruption.”
With 160 million votes nationwide, there will be some instances of fraud, he said, but nothing of the magnitude to overturn the election.
“We have good reason to think this year’s election was fair, secure, and law-abiding,” Sasse wrote. “That’s not to say it was flawless. But there is no evidentiary basis for distrusting our elections altogether, or for concluding that the results do not reflect the ballots that our fellow citizens actually cast.”
Without giving specifics or evidence, Hawley said Wednesday that he would object because “some states, including notably Pennsylvania,” did not follow their own election laws. Some states made changes to their election procedures, such as expanding absentee voting, to accommodate voters during the coronavirus pandemic, the worst U.S. public health emergency in a century. Lawsuits challenging Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania have been unsuccessful.
