Senator Lindsey Graham said he’ll listen to his Republican colleague Josh Hawley’s objection to the certification of Electoral College votes for Joe Biden but doubts it will make a difference.
During an interview on Fox News on Thursday, Graham said, “Senator Hawley has every right to object. But it’s another thing to overturn an election of another state.”
Sen. Hawley said on Wednesday that he will raise objections when Congress convenes to certify Electoral College results on January 6 to how some states, particularly Pennsylvania, conducted their elections.
President Donald Trump has refused to concede loss in the November 2020 presidential election, encouraging his supporters to carry on the fight.
Graham who’s one of Trump’s most loyalists in the Senate, said for Hawley to win his support to throw out any state’s election results, “you’re going to have to prove to me that the allegations you make are real.”
“If dead people were voting, I want the names. If you’re going to retry the case in the Senate that’s already been tried in the federal courts it would be hard for me to basically take over the federal courts’ role. But I will listen and we’ll see how it comes out,” Graham said.
Graham referenced a former Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer who tried to object to electors in 2004 but ended up getting one vote in the chamber, her own vote.
Hawley’s decision to object to the move puts many other Republicans in the difficult corner of having to buck President Trump and risk the ire of his coalition, or back him and lend credence to the notion that the election is illegitimate.
Although Sen. Hawley doesn’t seem to be moving with any known supporter for now as he said Wednesday he wasn’t sure whether any other GOP senators would join him in objecting.
