As the presidential race intensifies and many obsessively watch the polls, Rep. Joseph D. Morelle is looking past the November election to a different day — Jan. 6, 2025.
That’s when Congress will once again face the task of certifying the Electoral College results. It didn’t go so smoothly the last time, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol in 2021 and tried to stop the process.
Now Morelle, who serves as ranking member of the House Administration Committee, wants to call out his Republican colleagues.
“They’ve all forgotten. They have a collective amnesia about what happened,” said the New York Democrat on Monday, during a call organized by the liberal advocacy group Courage for America. “It is so astonishing to me.”
The call was scheduled 147 days ahead of Jan. 6, 2025 — to spotlight the 147 congressional Republicans who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s win. And it coincided with the release of two letters. The first went to all House Republicans, urging them to commit to certifying the upcoming presidential election results, win or lose. The second was sent to those Republicans who opposed certification in 2021, castigating them for their vote.
“You were one of 147 members of Congress who decided to put their allegiance to the Constitution second to partisan loyalty, refused to certify a free and fair election, voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and attempted to silence the votes and voices of the American people,” the letter states.
Both were signed by members of Courage for America, as well as former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, both of whom were seriously injured defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Fanone and Gonnell have been outspoken about the violence they experienced and were two of four officers who publicly testified before the House select committee that investigated the attack.
“I nearly lost my life defending our democracy that day,” Gonell said during the Courage for America call. “We can’t let this time be anything like the last. … We must demand every member of Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson, and his Republican colleagues, commit to peacefully certifying the November election results, regardless of the outcome.”
Fears have swirled ahead of the election, as many Republicans have been noncommittal on the issue of certifying election results. Johnson, who took over the House speakership in October, helped lead a legal challenge on behalf of Donald Trump in the wake of the 2020 election. And House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik said earlier this year that she’d have to see if it was a “legal and valid election” before committing to certifying.
In response to Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a bipartisan group of lawmakers advanced legislation in the 117th Congress that clarified the vice president’s ministerial role in certifying election results and raised the threshold for the number of lawmakers necessary to object to a state’s electors. Biden signed the bill into law in December 2022.
But even with the revised Electoral Count Act in place, some Democrats worry that Trump and his Republican allies in Congress could again launch a campaign to undermine the election should the GOP nominee lose.
Morelle, for his part, has repeatedly voiced his frustration with Republican colleagues on the House Administration Committee, who’ve spent the bulk of the 118th Congress promoting a voting package, dubbed the American Confidence in Elections Act, that he’s said is premised on Trump’s “big lie.”
In a series of hearings rolling out that legislation, Republicans on the committee have warned about Americans’ waning confidence in elections. In July of this year, the House passed a bill that would ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections, a practice that’s already illegal.
Short of public shaming, there’s little Democrats and their anti-Trump allies can do in the lead-up to a showdown between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris that early polling indicates will be tight. Morelle, though, said he plans to keep up the pressure.
“They’re sowing the seeds of doubt in the legitimacy of the 2024 election, even before a single ballot has been cast,” Morelle said.
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