[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 4 (Wednesday, January 6, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E19-E20]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     REGARDING JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS TO COUNT ELECTORAL BALLOTS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, January 6, 2021

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, as a senior member of the House 
Committees on the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committee; Ranking 
Member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland 
Security, and Investigations, and the Congressional Voting Rights 
Caucus, I rise today to offer thoughts and reflections on the 
congressional responsibility to bear witness to the counting of 
electoral votes to determine formally the persons elected President and 
Vice President of the United States and on the campaign and election 
that brought us to this day.
  The outcome of that count is not in doubt and has not been since 
November 7, 2020, when it became clear that Democratic candidates 
Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris had won the states of Georgia, 
Pennsylvania, and Arizona to become the 46th President and 59th Vice-
President of the United States, earning 306 electoral votes, 36 more 
than the 270 needed for election.
  The results in those states, as well as every other state that chose 
presidential electors on November 3, 2020, has been certified and 
wherever necessary upheld against legal challenge by the courts in the 
affected states.
  On December 14, 2020, presidential electors met in their respective 
state capitols to cast their votes for President and Vice-President, 
with the documentary and video evidence clearly demonstrating that the 
Biden/Harris ticket was the clear and unassailable choice of the 
Electoral College.
  The counting of the electors' ballot today will ratify the outcome 
that has been foretold for months and only those with the most 
conspiratorial mindset and the willing suspension of disbelief, like 
the current occupant of the White House and his band of acolytes 
consisting of 140 Members of the House and 12 U.S. senators, could 
persist in the delusion that the vox populi, the voice of the people, 
has not spoken clearly and definitively.
  Madam Speaker, the Biden/Harris ticket won the national popular vote 
going away, by more than 7 million votes, 81.3 million to 74.2 million.
  Their victory was so sweeping that it won the majority of states, 
including five states won four years ago by the loser, including 
Georgia, which a Democratic candidate had not won since 1992, and 
Arizona, which last voted Democratic in 1996.
  This day is not like its counterpart of 2001, when the determination 
of the winner hung in the balance on the outcome of the contest in 
Florida, where 537 votes out of 5.82 million votes cast separated the 
candidates and the U.S. Supreme Court halted the vote recount ordered 
by the Supreme Court of Florida, thus leaving reasonable persons to 
question who was the true winner of that state's decisive 25 electoral 
votes.
  This day is not like 2005, where the outcome hinged on the 18 
electoral votes of Ohio, and where state officials refused to count 
provisional ballots and engaged in other tactics alleged to be taken to 
suppress the votes of racial minorities.
  And certainly this day is not like 2017, when Congress met to count 
the electoral votes cast in the state's first American presidential 
election in which the U.S. Intelligence Community had confirmed was the 
subject of cyberattacks and other subversive activities of entities 
allied with the Government of Russia that were undertaken for the 
express purpose of influencing the outcome to secure the election of 
its preferred candidate, Donald Trump, who it should be added, openly 
invited a hostile foreign power to launch cyberattacks against his 
political opponent.
  Another important distinction involving the 2016 election is that it 
was the first presidential election held since the Supreme Court issued 
the notorious decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which neutered the 
preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act and adversely affected 
the ability of hundreds of thousands of persons to cast a ballot and 
have their vote counted.
  In contrast, American voters in 2020 were forewarned and forearmed 
against Russian interference, propaganda, and disinformation and with 
no backing but with the active resistance of the Chief Executive, the 
governments of the United States and the individual states took active 
measures to ensure the security and integrity of election systems 
against fraud and undue interference.
  This effort was so successful that the Election Infrastructure 
Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee, consisting 
of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), 
U.S. Election Assistance Commission, National Association of 
Secretaries of State, and the National Association of State Election 
Directors, issued the following statement on November 12, 2020:

       The November 3rd election was the most secure in American 
     history. Right now, across the country, election officials 
     are reviewing and double checking the entire election process 
     prior to finalizing the result.
       When states have close elections, many will recount 
     ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 
     presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing 
     the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. 
     This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This 
     process allows for the identification and correction of any 
     mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting 
     system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any 
     way compromised.

  Even United States Attorney General William P. Barr, the most 
politically biased person, to hold that office, publicly acknowledged 
that although U.S. attorneys and FBI agents had followed up on specific 
complaints and information they had received, ``to date, we have not 
seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in 
the election.''
  Under the laws of every state, the Trump Campaign was entitled to 
bring legal challenges to the administration of the election in any 
state where it felt aggrieved, and it took ample advantage of these 
opportunities, bringing scores of lawsuits alleging ``wide-spread 
fraud,'' requesting recounts, or demanding that votes cast for the 
Democratic candidate be thrown out or simply not counted.
  These legal challenges were met with colossal failure, the Trump 
Campaign suffering stinging defeats in more than 65 cases; its lone 
success came in Pennsylvania where a court granted its request to allow 
monitors to observe ballot tabulation from a distance of six rather 
than 10 feet away .
  Which brings us to this day, when die-hard followers of the current 
occupant of the White House, a group I call the ``Lost Cause Caucus,'' 
now seek to revive and press forward with the discredited and rejected 
claims of the Trump Campaign that the elections in the states that were 
key to bringing about his resounding defeat were ``rigged'' or 
``fraudulent'' or the result of some vague conspiracy by the ``Deep 
State.''
  Madam Speaker, this is utter nonsense; which I show by examining the 
challenge to the electors from Pennsylvania, where like Robert E. Lee 
at Gettysburg, Trump pitched his flag and made his grand stand.
  Over 6.9 million Pennsylvanians voted in that election, with over 2.6 
million of those voters using mail-in or absentee ballots; Vice 
President Biden received 3,459,923 votes, easily beating Trump, by 
81,660 votes.
  Vice-President Biden's vote margin was twice as large as was Trump's 
when he won the state in an upset in 2016.
  Madam Speaker, it is not difficult to understand why so many 
Pennsylvanians voted in 2019, and by mail in unprecedented numbers.
  In 2019, with broad and bipartisan support, the Pennsylvania General 
Assembly enacted Act 77 of 2019, which made several important updates 
and improvements to Pennsylvania's Election Code, Act of Oct. 31, 2019 
(P.L. 552, No. 77), 2019 Pa. Legis. Serv. 2019-77 (S.B. 421) (West) 
(``Act 77'').
  Among these were provisions that, for the first time, offered the 
option of mail-in voting to

[[Page E20]]

all Pennsylvania electors. See 25 P.S. Sec. Sec. 3150.11-3150.17.
  This change was a significant development that made it easier for all 
Pennsylvanians to exercise their right to vote and brought the state in 
line with the practice of dozens of other states.
  Under Act 77, voters had until October 27, 2020, to request a mail-in 
ballot for this year's November 3rd General Election. 25 P.S. 
Sec. 3150.12a(a).
  Act 77 set 8:00 p.m. on Election Day as the due date for returning 
those ballots to the county boards of elections. 25 P.S. Sec. 3150.16.
  The Election Code provides for a variety of safeguards to ensure the 
integrity of this process. See 25 P.S. Sec. 3146.8(g)(3); 25 P.S. 
Sec. 3146.2c; 25 P.S. Sec. 3146.8 (g)(4); 25 P.S. Sec. 3150.12b(a)(2).
  The presidential election results were certified, and Pennsylvania 
Governor Tom Wolf signed the Certificate of Ascertainment on November 
24, 2020, long in advance of the required date to fall under the ``Safe 
Harbor'' provision of three-day the governing Electoral Count Act of 
1887, 3 U.S.C. Sec. 5, making the certification of Pennsylvania's 
electors conclusive.
  Madam Speaker, multiple challenges were made to the certification of 
Pennsylvania's electors, all of which were rejected by both state and 
federal courts.
  First, there is no merit or truth to the claim that the Pennsylvania 
Secretary of State ``abrogated'' the mandatory signature verification 
requirement for absentee or mail-in ballots. See In re Nov. 3, 2020 
Election, 240 A.3d 591, 610 (Pa. 2020) (Election Code does not 
authorize county election boards to reject mail-in ballots based on an 
analysis of a voter's signature. ``[A]t no time did the Code provide 
for challenges to ballot signatures.'').
  Far from usurping any legislative authority, the Pennsylvania Supreme 
Court refused ``to rewrite a statute in order to supply terms which 
[we]re not present therein.'' Id. at 14.
  A federal judge reached the same result. See In Donald Trump for 
President, Inc. v. Boockvar, 2020 WL 5997680, at *58 (W.D. Pa. Oct. 10, 
2020) (``[T]he Election Code does not impose a signature-comparison 
requirement for mail-in and absentee ballots.'').
  Second, there is a similar lack of merit and truth to the claim that 
certain Pennsylvania county boards of elections did not grant 
pollwatchers access to the opening, counting, and recording of absentee 
and mail-in ballots. See In re Canvassing Observation, _A.3d _, 2020 WL 
6737895, *8-9 (Pa. 2020) (holding that state law re-quires candidate 
representatives to be in the room but the viewing distance is committed 
to the county boards, which, in that case, was reasonable); Trump for 
President, Inc. v. Sec'y of Pennsylvania, 2020 WL 7012522, at *8 (3d 
Cir. Nov. 27, 2020) (affirming dismissal of poll-watcher claim, in 
part, because the Trump Campaign ``has already raised and lost most of 
these state-law issues, and it cannot relitigate them here.'').
  Third, there is no basis to a claim that certain Pennsylvania 
counties adopted differential standards favoring voters in Philadelphia 
and Allegheny Counties with the intent to favor former Vice President 
Biden.
  This claim was raised and dismissed in Trump v. Boockvar, 4:20--cv-
02078 (M.D. Pa. Nov. 18, 2020) because those charges were backed by 
neither specific allegations nor evidence. Trump for President, Inc. v. 
Sec'y of Pennsylvania, 2020 WL 7012522, at *8 (3d Cir. Nov. 27, 2020).
  Fourth, that certain counties permitted voters to cure minor defects 
in mail-in ballots was permissible under Pennsylvania law because minor 
defects--such as a failure to handwrite the voter's name and/or address 
on the declaration--did not, in fact, void the ballot. See In re 
Canvass of Absentee & Mail-in Ballots of November 3, 2020 Gen. 
Election, 29 WAP 2020, _A.3d_, 2020 WL 6866415, *15 (Pa. Nov. 23, 2020) 
(``We have conducted that analysis here and we hold that a signed but 
undated declaration is sufficient and does not implicate any weighty 
interest. Hence, the lack of a handwritten date cannot result in vote 
disqualification.''); Trump v. Boockvar, 2020 WL 6821992, *12 (M.D. Pa. 
2020) (``it is perfectly rational for a state to provide counties 
discretion to notify voters that they may cure procedurally defective 
mail-in ballots''), aff'd 2020 WL 7012522.
  Fifth, there was no state law violation when the Pennsylvania Supreme 
Court temporarily modified the deadline for the receipt of mail-in and 
absentee ballots, because state constitutional law required it. See Pa. 
Democratic Party v. Boockvar, 238 A.3d 345, 369-72 (Pa. 2020).
  Nothing in the Elections Clause of Article I ``instructs, nor has the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court ever held, that a state legislature may 
prescribe regulations on the time, place, and manner of holding federal 
elections in defiance of provisions of the State's constitution.'' 
Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Indep. Redistricting Comm'n, 576 
U.S. 787, 817-18 (2015) (AIRC). The same is true for the Elector Clause 
in Article II.
  Sixth, there is no truth to the claim that Pennsylvania ``broke its 
promise to the U.S. Supreme Court to segregate ballots and comingled 
illegal late ballots .
  The Pennsylvania Secretary of State had already instructed that all 
ballots received during the three-day period be segregated and counted 
separately and Justice Alito adopted these instructions by the 
Secretary as an order of the Court.
  The Pennsylvania county boards of elections complied with that order; 
qualified ballots received during the three-day extension were 
segregated and counted separately.
  The number of such ballots is too small to change the outcome of any 
federal election in Pennsylvania.
  Finally, there is nothing sinister, surprising, or fraudulent in the 
fact that late-counted mail-in ballots eviscerated Trump's temporary 
lead in the popular vote by disproportionately favoring Vice-President 
Biden.
  The votes counted before 3 a.m. and those counted afterwards were 
indisputably not ``randomly drawn'' from the same population of votes, 
as those counted earlier were predominantly in-person votes while those 
counted later were predominantly mail-in votes .
  Even the proponents of this bogus challenge to Pennsylvania's 
electors admit that Democratic voters voted by mail at two to three 
times the rate of Republicans.
  Both this fact and the expectation that it would result in a shift in 
President-Elect Biden's favor as mail-in votes were counted were widely 
reported months ahead of the election.
  Madam Speaker, as I noted at the outset, we are here today to 
exercise a duty imposed on Members of the House and the Senate by the 
Constitution and laws of the United States.
  But it is true that although we are called upon to bear witness to 
the counting of electoral votes, our role is not confined to passive 
observation.
  The Constitution and the law, specifically Section 15 of the 
Electoral College Act, 3 U.S.C. Sec. 1 et seq., authorizes 
Representatives and Senators to object to the counting of any vote cast 
by an elector if in their judgment the vote was not ``regularly given'' 
or the person casting the vote was not ``lawfully certified'' as an 
elector.
  The Constitution devolves this solemn duty upon the people's 
representatives, the Congress, because the linchpin of representative 
democracy is public confidence in the political system, regime, and 
community.
  That confidence in turn rests upon the extent to which the public has 
faith that the system employed to select its leaders accurately 
reflects its preferences.
  At bottom, this means that all citizens casting a vote have a 
fundamental right and reasonable expectation that their votes count and 
are counted.
  For these reasons, I owe it to my constituents and to the American 
people to consider each electoral vote certificate as it is presented 
and accept those that appear to be meritorious.
  Were any electoral vote certificate not to satisfy the statutory 
requirement that the votes reflected on the lists were ``regularly 
given' by ``lawfully certified'' electors I would oppose it.
  But that is not the case before us because the votes before us were 
regularly given by lawfully certified electors, whose status was 
resolved, where need be, at least six days before the meeting of 
electors pursuant to laws that were in place before the election as 
required by Section 5 of the Electoral Count Act, 3 U.S.C. Sec. 5.
  That means the validity of their appointment is conclusive and their 
vote preferences binding on us.
  For this reason, I oppose the objections raised and accept the final 
vote tally that will be announced by the President of the Senate at its 
conclusion, and in doing so will be keeping faith with the admonition 
and prayer made by President Lincoln over the graves of patriots that 
`government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not 
perish from the earth.''

                          ____________________