Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Arizona Objection Debate/Neguse Speech
Mr. Neguse. Madam Speaker, today is an important day. In 1862, during the depths of the Civil War, President Lincoln submitted his annual message to Congress, to this body, and in it, he wrote the following: “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. … The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. … We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth.”
Madam Speaker, we gather today to ensure the survival of our grand American experiment, the greatest democracy this world has ever known, and there are millions of people watching today’s proceedings. The eyes of the world are on us now, my colleagues, wondering if we will keep the faith, wondering if our constitutional Republic will hold.
Will we adhere to our Constitution, that solemn visionary document that has guided us so well for so long and enabled the peaceful transfer of power for the last 230 years?
Will we continue to be a country premised on the consent of the governed, a Congress that respects the will of the people, and a Republic that will endure?
Madam Speaker, those are the questions before us today. With respect to my new colleague from Colorado, the question is not whether Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States. He clearly was. The people of Arizona, like so much of the country, spoke clearly and resoundingly. They voted in record numbers, and over 81 million Americans selected Joe Biden as the next President.
Now, today, we hear from some in this Chamber—not all, but some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle—vague claims of fraud.
No substance.
No evidence.
No facts.
No explanation for why over 88 judges across this land have rejected the very same claims.
Madam Speaker, the bottom line is this. As my colleague, Representative Raskin, so eloquently put it, the people have spoken, and that is why, on December 14, the electoral college met to certify the election of a duly elected President, just as they have done for centuries during terrible world wars, recessions, depressions, plagues, and pandemics.
They met their duty, and they once again rose to the occasion and certified the election. And the question now is, will we do ours?
Now, I know there are many textualists among us, many of my colleagues who would understand that the Constitution must guide our work today. And the Constitution is crystal clear: Our duty today is a narrow one.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 reads: “The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be the President.”
That is it, period. Our job is not to replace the judgment made by the American people with our own. Yet, that is precisely what so many of my House and Senate Republican colleagues ask this body to do, to substitute their judgment for the expressed will of the American people.
In America, we don’t do that. In the United States, we accept the results of free and fair elections.
Madam Speaker, we don’t ignore the will of the voters and attempt to install a preferred candidate into power. That doesn’t happen here.
Madam Speaker, I will close with this. Our duty, our task, is a very simple one: to honor the voice of the people, to honor our Constitution, to count the votes, to certify this election, and begin to heal this great country of ours.
I pray each of us may find the courage to do so.