[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 220 (Monday, December 28, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1212]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      2020 ELECTION IRREGULARITIES

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE WILSON

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, December 28, 2020

  Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Madam Speaker, as a former Election 
Commissioner, not as a Member of Congress, I am disgusted of the 
irregularities of the 2020 election. The first duty of a commissioner 
is fairness and honesty, not facilitating fraud as has sadly so clearly 
occurred in 2020.
   The failure to verify signatures, the omission of witnesses, the 
interruption of counting before completion, the denial of poll watchers 
for access to fully observe, the extension of ballots received beyond 
Election Day, registration of illegal aliens, the mailing of mass 
ballots requested or not, with all irregularities being uncontrovented, 
this is an open invitation of fraud with financing of hundreds of 
millions of dollars by elitist tech billionaires to pay for ``get out 
the vote'' for Democrats to maintain tech monopolies.
   I was grateful to join my colleagues from South Carolina, Jeff 
Duncan of Laurens, Ralph Norman of Rock Hill, Tom Rice of Myrtle Beach, 
and William Timmons of Greenville, as ``friends of the court'' along 
with 121 additional Members of Congress to support the legal challenge 
to the election irregularities.
   In addition, Attorney General Alan Wilson of South Carolina 
courageously joined the suit with 16 additional states, but 
unfortunately the Supreme Court declined to accept the challenge. An 
excellent review of the Attorney General's actions was published 
December 15, 2020, in The Post and Courier of Charleston.

                        Why I Joined the Lawsuit

        A number of critics have attacked South Carolina's 
     involvement in the election lawsuit that went to the U.S. 
     Supreme Court. Now that the court has decided not to hear the 
     suit, I would like to address the attacks, but first I will 
     explain my position with a simple analogy.
        Consider an example where two football teams are playing 
     for the national championship, and in the final seconds of 
     the game one team scores the game-winning touchdown. As the 
     winning team celebrates, a camera angle of the touchdown 
     shows that the player who ran the ball into the end zone 
     might have stepped out of bounds before crossing the goal 
     line.
        The coach of the presumptive losing team challenges the 
     last play by asking the referee for a review. The reason for 
     this challenge is because if it is determined that the player 
     stepped out of bounds before scoring, then the rules were 
     violated and the touchdown is not legitimate. The coach has a 
     duty to exhaust all remedies available to him; otherwise, he 
     is not doing his job.
        Just like football, elections have rules that must be 
     followed to the letter before a winner can be declared. In 
     this particular case, the rules for federal elections are 
     given to us in the U.S. Constitution, and I interpret those 
     rules to say basically that laws dictating the time, location 
     and manner of elections should be determined by state 
     legislatures and no one else.
        A number of state officials from other states--well-
     intentioned or not--unilaterally rewrote the laws through 
     executive fiat, which is, arguably, a violation of the 
     ``electors clause'' of the Constitution. For example, in one 
     state the legislature passed a law that said ballots must be 
     received postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. The court in 
     that state, which is a non-legislative body, extended the 
     deadline by three days and waived the requirement for a 
     postmark on the mail-in ballot.
        I believe the Constitution only grants the state 
     legislature with the legal authority to change the deadline 
     and postmark requirements, not another state official. This 
     raises the question, in this particular example, of whether 
     the ballots received days after the election with no postmark 
     are in fact legal votes and, if they are not legal votes, 
     should we still count them? Other examples can be cited, but 
     either way, this is analogous to a player allegedly stepping 
     out of bounds.
        Normally I would never intervene in another state's 
     business, nor should I. However, presidential elections are 
     national elections where oftentimes the outcome is determined 
     by only a few states. If state officials were to unilaterally 
     change their state law and those changes might have affected 
     the outcome of the national election, then the voters of all 
     the other states who voted for the other candidate would be 
     disenfranchised.
        There is an appellate process in football that allows a 
     coach to challenge the results of a play when that coach 
     believes the other team may have violated the rules. The 
     referee reviews the play and either agrees with the challenge 
     or disagrees with the challenge. The losing team had the 
     opportunity through that process to exercise its right to 
     challenge. This process is what legitimizes the final results 
     of the game.
        In this case, the Supreme Court was our referee, and there 
     was an allegation that a constitutional violation had 
     occurred. The process for choosing our president allows the 
     states the opportunity to challenge a questionable result. 
     The Supreme Court had the authority to decline to hear the 
     lawsuit, but we had the right to present this important 
     issue. Even though the Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit, 
     moving forward we should not allow election officials to 
     unilaterally change election laws. Such changes severely 
     diminish the integrity of elections.
        It's amazing that so many have criticized the states for 
     daring to raise this question before the court on behalf of 
     so many who believe the rules have been violated. I wonder if 
     this righteous indignation would be as loud if the roles were 
     reversed. History suggests that it would not.

                          ____________________