Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Arizona Objection Debate/Raskin Speech
Mr. Raskin. Madam Speaker, I thank you first and all my dear beloved colleagues for your love and tenderness, which my family and I will never forget.
Abraham Lincoln, whose name is a comfort to us all, said: “We have got the best government the world ever knew.”
It is best because the first three words of the Constitution tell us who governs here: We the People.
Watch this proceeding today and tell the world with pride, as Lincoln did, about the brilliant meaning and promise of our country. Our Government belongs to the people.
As President Ford said: Here the people rule.
Today we are in the people’s House to complete the people’s process for choosing the people’s President. We assemble into joint session for a solemn purpose that we have all sworn a sacred oath to faithfully discharge. The 12th Amendment obligates each and every one of us to count the electoral votes to recognize the will of the people in the 2020 Presidential election.
We are not here, Madam Speaker, to vote for the candidate we want. We are here to recognize the candidate the people actually voted for in the States.
Madam Speaker, the 2020 election is over and the people have spoken. Joe Biden received more than 80 million votes. Seven million more than President Trump. A number larger than any other President has received in U.S. history. The sweeping popular victory translated into an electoral college victory of 306–232, a margin which President Trump pronounced a landslide when he won by those exact same numbers in 2016.
So now we count the electoral votes that were just delivered to us in the beautiful mahogany cases brought by those hardworking Senate pages. These mahogany cases contain only the 538 electoral votes that were sent in by the States, not the 159 million ballots that were cast by our constituents. Those were counted 2 months ago by hundreds of thousands of election officials and poll workers across America who risked their health and even their lives in the time of COVID to deliver what our Department of Homeland Security called the most secure election in American history. Many of these officials have endured threats of retribution, violence, and even death just for doing their jobs.
Just as the popular vote was for Biden, so was the electoral vote. On December 15, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recognized it. “The electoral college has spoken,” the Senator said from the Senate floor. “Today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
Yet, we have seen escalating attacks on our election with unfounded claims of fraud and corruption. More than 60 lawsuits have been brought to date seeking to overturn the results. They have failed repeatedly and they have failed spectacularly.
Every objection we hear today maligning our States and their officials—both Republican and Democrat—has been litigated, adjudicated, and obliterated in both Federal and State Courts. The President has not just had his day in court, Madam Speaker, he has had more than 2 months in court looking for a judge to embrace these arguments. In more than 50 cases, Madam Speaker, at least 88 different judges, including many appointed by the President himself, have meticulously rejected the President’s claims of fraud and corruption.
Take Georgia U.S. District Court Judge Steven Grimberg, who was named to the bench by President Trump last year. He rejected President Trump’s prayer to block certification of Biden’s victory in Georgia, saying it “has no basis in fact or law.”
Take U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig, another Trump nominee who took the bench in September. He dismissed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results in Wisconsin, calling it “extraordinary.”
He said: “A sitting President who did not prevail in his bid for reelection has asked for Federal Court help in setting aside the popular vote based on … issues he plainly could have raised before the vote occurred.
“This court allowed the plaintiff the chance to make his case, and he has lost on the merits.”
Trump has asked for the rule of law to be followed, Judge Ludwig observed, and he said definitively: It has been.
I have been a constitutional law professor for 30 years, and if I were to test my students on these decisions, it would be the easiest test in the world because the plaintiffs have lost nearly every case and every issue in the most sweeping terms. That is all they would have to remember. There is no basis in fact or law to justify the unprecedented relief that is being requested of nullifying these elections.
We are here to count the votes. Let us do our job.