SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A
aimed at uncovering election ir-
regularities, only a few have ap-
peared willing to endorse an ex-
traordinary move to appoint pro-
Trump electors in states Biden
won.
A reminder of continued GOP
support for Trump’s efforts was
apparent Saturday in Michigan,
where the state’s Republican
chairwoman, Laura Cox, issued a
joint statement with Republican
National Committee Chairwom-
an Ronna McDaniel calling on the
state to delay final certification of
the vote and conduct a “full audit
and investigation.” This came a
day after the state’s top GOP law-
makers met with Trump at the
White House but declared after-
ward that they had “not yet been
made aware of any information
that would change the outcome of
the election in Michigan.”
For the most part, local and
state officials have either re-
mained silent or moved forward
with the process of certifying elec-
tion results, potentially closing
the door to Trump’s post-election
gambit to change the results —
first through the courts and then
by way of GOP-led statehouses.
Republican officials have been
reluctant to openly defy Trump,
and many have either humored
him or echoed less incendiary
versions of his evidence-free
claims about rigged voting ma-
chines and mail-in ballots. Others
have offered only milquetoast
and vague statements aiming to
defend the integrity of their
states’ voting processes while not
offending a prickly and vindictive
president.
Their delicate posturing un-
derscores the challenge Republi-
cans face as the president solicits
their complicity in undermining
the democratic process while
maintaining an ironclad grip on
the party’s voting base.
And it mirrors the approach of
some federal officials, including
in the Justice Department, where
Attorney General William P. Barr
touted false claims about mail-in
ballots but prosecutors have
made no moves to investigate the
recent baseless allegations by
Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giu-
liani of a global conspiracy by
Democrats to steal the election.
“ Republicans knew they’ve
been damned if they do and worse
if they don’t when it comes to
crossing Trump,” said Doug Heye,
a former top official at the Repub-
lican National Committee and a
Trump critic. “But they thought
that would end post-Election Day.
Instead, they’re stuck in the same
time warp: Meet the new boss,
same as the old boss.”
In recent days, Trump and his
legal team have put their atten-
tion more squarely on GOP state
lawmakers in a last-ditch attempt
to get them to fix the electoral
college in his favor.
Under a highly disputed legal
theory, Republican lawmakers in
key swing states could potentially
vote to appoint Trump-support-
ing electors even if their constitu-
ents voted for Biden.
Trump’s most aggressive at-
tempt yet to use the weight of the
presidency to lean on state law-
makers — summoning the Michi-
gan legislators to the White
House — coincided with Trump’s
legal team’s effort to force a delay
in the certification of that state’s
election results. President-elect
Joe Biden won the state by more
than 150,000 votes.
The details of the meeting are
not known. But if Trump’s goal
was to get Michigan’s GOP-led
legislature to commit publicly to
backing his push to toss out
Biden’s win, he did not appear to
make much headway.
After the meeting, Michigan
Senate Majority Leader Mike
Shirkey and House Speaker Lee
Chatfield said that while they sup-
ported investigating fraud allega-
tions, they would honor the out-
come of the state’s election. A
joint statement issued after the
meeting said that “the candidates
who win the most votes win elec-
tions and Michigan’s electoral
votes. These are simple truths
that should provide confidence in
our elections.”
But although Shirkey and
Chatfield, who later Friday were
seen having drinks at Trump’s
hotel near the White House, did
not endorse the president’s base-
less claims or embrace the pros-
pect of disenfranchising hun-
dreds of thousands of Black vot-
ers in cities like Detroit, they did
not directly denounce the claims,
either. And on the same day, Cox,
the state GOP chairwoman, said
that Republicans would continue
pressuring the state to audit the
vote in Wayne County, home to a
large percentage of Michigan’s
Black residents.
The state canvassing board is
to meet Monday to certify the
vote. One of the two Republican
members, Norman Shinkle, told
The Washington Post on Thurs-
day that he was leaning toward
LEGISLATORS FROM A
seeking a delay and requesting an
audit of the vote, citing debunked
conspiracy theories touted by
Trump and his attorneys about
voting machines. But the state-
ment by Shirkey and Chatfield
suggested that any delay would
not ultimately result in Trump’s
reversing Biden’s win through
legislative edict.
While a growing number of
state officials have begun to speak
out against the president’s en-
treaties, more have remained si-
lent or taken steps to indulge him.
As Trump and his allies have
floated the idea of delaying certi-
fication of election results and
having GOP-led legislatures fix
the electoral college in his favor,
the unwillingness of many state-
level Republicans to forcefully de-
nounce such a move has been
interpreted in the White House as
a green light to press ahead.
Out of more than three dozen
top Republican officials in Ari-
zona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Nevada and Georgiacontacted by The Washington
Post on Friday, only a handful
have commented on the record
about Trump’s push to overturn
the election results. This reti-
cence has left breathing room for
Trump’s claims about widespread
voter fraud to flourish, despite a
lack of evidence that there was
any such fraud or that irregulari-
ties had shaped the results of the
election.
Though some Republican offi-
cials have increasingly dismissed
or ignored the incendiary fraud
claims by Trump and Giuliani, the
slew of carefully worded state-
ments, declinations to comment
and vague attempts to defend the
president reflect the enduring
power of the president’s grip on
his party.
Some historians say legislators’
willingness even to entertain the
idea of overturning voters’ choice
sets a dangerous precedent.
S en. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is
one of a small number of Republi-
can officials who have not minced
words as Trump has attacked and
undermined a bedrock compo-
nent of the democratic process.
“It is difficult to imagine a
worse, more undemocratic action
by a sitting American President,”
Romney said in a statement
Thursday that blasted Trump for
attempting to put “overt pressure
on state and local officials to sub-
vert the will of the people.”
But the sentiment from Rom-
ney was far from a mainstream
position within the party that se-
lected him as its presidential
nominee in 2012.
Most of his fellow Republican
U.S. senators have remained si-lent about Trump’s actions, leav-
ing the work of defending the
integrity of the election to the
local and state officials tasked
with overseeing voting issues in
their respective states.
After largely staying on the
sidelines in the debate over Geor-
gia’s election, Kemp said on Fri-
day that he would follow state law
requiring him to accept the secre-
tary of state’s certified results.
“State law now requires the
governor’s office to formalize the
certification, which paves the way
for the Trump campaign to pur-
sue other legal options and a sepa-
rate legal option if they choose,”
he said in a statement. “A s gover-
nor, I have a solemn responsibili-
ty to follow the law, and that is
what I will continue to do.”
There was little pushback
among state lawmakers.
While one Georgia state legis-
lator, Rep. Colton Moore, wrote a
letter to Kemp earlier Friday call-
ing on him to allow the legislature
to assume “the burden” of decid-
ing the election, few joined him.
Some in the party wanted to
quickly move on from the election
and the claims of vote-rigging to
turn their attention — and
Trump’s — to two critical runoff
races that could determine con-
trol of the U.S. Senate. Undermin-
ing faith in the electoral system
could make it harder for incum-
bent Republican Sens. Kelly Loef-
fler and David Perdue to corral
enough support in the Jan. 5 rac-
es, said Brian Robinson, a GOP
communications consultant in
the state who was a longtime
spokesman for Nathan Deal when
the Republican was Georgia gov-
ernor.
“We need to move our focus to
the Senate races. Georgians
s ingle-handedly get to determine
who operates Washington for the
next two years,” he said. “Senators
Loeffler and Perdue need their
voters to have faith in the integri-
ty of the election system, and
they need President Trump to
engage and rev up his turnout
machine.”
Republicans who have re-
mained silent in the face of
Trump’s antics have done so in
part out of fear of angering the
president’s base — which turned
out in force to back him in No-
vember, Heye said.
Still, some of the most forceful
pushbacks to Trump’s c laims have
come from local GOP officials.
On Friday, the five-member
Maricopa County Board of Super-
visors — all but one of whom are
Republicans — voted unanimous-
ly to certify the county’s election
results, which showed Biden had
won Arizona’s largest county.
Before doing so, they ques-
tioned county elections officials
for nearly three hours in pains-
taking detail about how votes had
been cast and tabulated, an effort
to show that the process had been
transparent and airtight.
Board Chairman Clint Hick-
man (R) noted that his own office
had received 180 letters, 4,
emails and nearly 3,000 voice
mails about the election.
“I continue to hear from gov-
ernment leaders and the public
about the integrity of Maricopa
County elections,” he said. “I have
listened to and considered all the-
ories about what might have hap-
pened. Let me be clear: There is
no evidence of fraud or miscon-
duct or malfunction in Maricopa
County, and that is with a big
zero.”
Maricopa County Supervisor
Steve Chucri (R) shot down con-
spiracy theories that Trump’s al-lies have circulated regarding Do-
minion voting machines. Election
officials also testified that results
of a hand audit of a portion of
ballots had matched 100 percent
with machine-tabulated figures,
and that representatives of the
state’s Republican, Democratic
and Libertarian parties had all
signed off on that audit earlier in
the week.
Hickman closed out the meet-
ing with a veiled but pointed mes-
sage for those, including Arizona
GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward,
who continued to allege wide-
spread voter fraud when there
was no evidence to support it.
“I have learned a lot about the
character of people in this com-
munity regarding this matter. I’ve
been disheartened by individuals
using this time to find relevancy
or fundraise off this issue,” he
said. “It’s time to dial back the
rhetoric, conspiracies and false
claims.”
While the GOP caucus in Ari-
zona’s state Senate announced itwas setting up an email address to
collect new claims of voter fraud,
it did not appear prepared to take
more aggressive steps to deliver
the state to Trump. Senate Presi-
dent Karen Fann (R) did not re-
spond to The Post’s request for
comment but told the Arizona
Republic on Thursday that she
did not intend to try to delay the
certification of Arizona’s vote.
“There’s no way we can say
we’re going to change this now,”
she said.
A similar dynamic was at play
in Nevada, where the state party
has been using its official social
media accounts to solicit poten-
tial examples of voter fraud from
whistleblowers but where offi-
cials have not taken steps to over-
turn Biden’s win.
Nevada Secretary of State Bar-
bara Cegavske, a Republican,
published a statement this past
week in which she denied she had
met with any Republicans in Con-
gress about the election results
and distanced herself from thecertification process.
“A t no point do I, as Secretary of
State, have the authority to certify
or not certify election results. Ul-
timately, it is the Governor who
declares the outcomes and issues
certificates of election,” she said
in that statement.
A spokeswoman for Cegavske
said the secretary of state was
unavailable for comment.
Pennsylvania Senate Majority
Leader Jake Corman declined a
request for comment on Trump’s
efforts to reverse the election re-
sults through statehouses.
The op-ed he wrote last month
with House Majority Leader Ker-
ry Benninghoff was blunt: “We
have said it many times and we
will happily say it again: The
Pennsylvania General Assembly
does not have and will not have a
hand in choosing the state’s presi-
dential electors or in deciding the
outcome of the presidential elec-
tion.”
But Corman told the Philadel-
phia Inquirer this past week that
“we need to be patient and allow
the process — the constitutional
process that has been laid out for
us — to unfold” and that legal
processes still in motion should
be allowed to conclude before
results are certified. He also said
the only way the state legislature
might be involved in that process
would be “if there was no certifi-
cation of the results.”
In Wisconsin, the GOP-led
Committee on Campaigns and
Elections said it was collecting
“complaints, concerns or allega-
tions” about the November elec-
tion, but few lawmakers spent
time discussing Trump’s allega-
tions that Biden’s 2 0,000-vote vic-
tory in the state resulted from
widespread fraud. Instead, Re-
publican House Speaker Robin
Vos spent Friday meeting with
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers dis-
cussing a coronavirus relief pack-
age.
When three voters dropped
their lawsuit seeking to disqualify
all the votes in Democratic-lean-
ing Dane, Milwaukee and
Menominee counties last week,
Republican House Majority Lead-
er Jim Steineke responded with a
two-word tweet: “Good news.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Amy Gardner, Tom Hamburger, Emma
Brown, Michelle Ye Hee Lee and
David Fahrenthold contributed to this
report.Trump’s bid to reverse his loss is f ailing with GOP o∞cials
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Trump, seen Friday at the White House, continues to assert without providing evidence, including in multiple lawsuits that have
been dismissed around the country, that Joe Biden’s election win was gained by widespread fraud and that he, Trump, is in fact the victor.“Let me be clear:
T here is no evidence
o f fraud or
misconduct or
malfunction in
Maricopa County,
a nd that is with
a big zero.”
Clint Hickman (R),
chair of the Maricopa County
B oard of Supervisors,
w hich voted unanimously Friday
t o certify the election r esults
i n the county“We owe a great debt of gratitude to our service
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