With less than a month to go until Election Day, lawmakers across the country are preparing for how they will handle its results amid heightened political and social tensions. Some of former President Donald Trump's allies have refused to answer time and time again whether they would accept election results that don't benefit them. Now, it seems some Democrats may be taking a page out of that book as well.
Democratic leaders in Congress and across the country have asserted they are fully prepared to certify a potential Trump victory in November. But a small minority of dissenters are conflicted between their deep distrust of Donald Trump and their lively denunciations of any election challengers since the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Among those conflicted is Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the House Oversight Committee and former Jan. 6 committee member who objected to Trump electors in 2017. He told Axios that if Trump "won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it."
However, the Representative does not think it is safe to assume that the former president will play by the rules of the game, given his track record of trying to overturn elections.
Trump "is doing whatever he can to try to interfere with the process, whether we're talking about manipulating electoral college counts in Nebraska or manipulating the vote count in Georgia or imposing other kinds of impediments," Raskin told the news outlet.
Another member of the House joining Raskin's skepticism is House Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who also objected to Trump electors in 2017. He told Axios Democrats would certify a Trump victory "assuming everything goes the way we expect it to."
"We have to see how it all happens," McGovern said, "my expectation is that we would."
But despite growing tensions ahead of Election Day, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), has signaled there is little chance of an organized effort to decertify electors.
"House Democrats are going to do everything necessary to... ensure that the winner of the presidential election is certified on January 6th without drama or consequences," Jeffries said at a September press conference.
Democrats' declarations come as Trump continues to refuse his defeat during the 2020 election, a topic his campaign may not necessarily be keen to discuss in the last few weeks before the big contest, The Hill reports
"We can say with absolute certainty that Trump and his campaign do not want this to be a topic of conversation," said Jim Kessler, a co-founder of the left-center think tank Third Way. "They do not want this in the news cycle at all and they feel it does damage. And it does damage because it's a reminder to people of the chaos that he brings and that he denies the obvious truth."
The infamous claims have made their way back to headlines after Trump's running mate refused to accept Trump's defeat during the 2020 elections at the Vice Presidential debate with Minn. Gov. Tim Walz. He also downplayed Trump's own refusal to concede.
Trump himself has also increasingly brought up the topic during his recent appearances.
"We did great in 2016 and a lot of people don't know that we did a lot better in 2020. We won. We won. We did win. It was a rigged election," Trump said at a rally in Michigan last week.
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
