Blackburn on Senate Republican Electoral College Challenge: ‘We Should Get Answers to This’
Saturday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “America’s News HQ,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) discussed her decision to participate in an effort to object to the election results from certain states.
Blackburn joins Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ron Johnson (R-WI), James Lankford (R-OK), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Kennedy (R-LA) and Mike Braun (R-IN), and Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).
She explained to FNC host Gillian Turner that they were working toward resolving outstanding questions about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
“Gillian, what transpired was a couple of us had been working independently on finding a way to address the issues of election integrity to make certain that legal votes are counted and that votes that are not legal are not counted and that people can trust that this is a true and fair election,” she said. “And as we said in our joint statement, looking at where the American people are on this, the millions of people that feel like this election was not a fair election. We knew that there needed to be something that was done. People can define the problems, but defining an action that leads to a solution is something that is a little bit more difficult to do. So we brought together our efforts, and that is what you have in the statement. And the closest example we have is the 1877 election, when this is exactly what they did — when there was a challenge to the votes that were taking place in 3 states. And there have been years, you know, in 1969, 2001, 2005, 2011, 2017, the Democrats launched their objections — we wanted to launch something to give a deliverable.”
Blackburn insisted an audit was needed to reach that “deliverable” response.
“This audit will answer the questions as to what happened in some of the disputed states,” Blackburn explained. “Of course, Pennsylvania, there’s many questions in Pennsylvania. But when you look at what transpired this year and people saying, we want to know what happened. And Gillian, you also have to realize what happened over the last four years. The Democrats never accepted president trump. They spent every single day trying to undermine him, trying to work against him, trying to obstruct. The day after, they named themselves the resistance and said they were going to resist him every single day. There are ways for us to approach this. This is one of them. We should get answers to this. The American people should be able to trust in their electoral system, and the electoral college is a vital part of our process. And this will be the opportunity that we have to weigh in. Of course, fixing this, as one of my friends said yesterday, one of my Tennessee neighbors, said fixing it is up to the states, isn’t it? And I said this, yes, it is. This goes back to the states. They’re the ones that set their election laws and implement elections at the local and state level.
The Tennessee lawmaker denied her and her colleagues’ decision was motivated by retribution against Democrats for the past four years of obstructing Trump.
“Oh, not at all. Gillian, as I said, the Democrats have launched their objections,” she added. “And you can go back and look at recent past elections where they have had their objections and have launched them — whether it was 69, 01, 2005, 2017. What we are saying is, let’s get to the bottom of this. Let’s find out what happened. Let’s let the American people have trust in the integrity of the elections. This is the appropriate way to do it, as I said. Several of us were working on things. We brought our ideas together. We feel like this is respectful of the Electoral College, respectful of the process, respectful of the institution, and this is how we are going to move forward.”
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/01/02/blackburn-on-senate-republican-electoral-college-challenge-we-should-get-answers-to-this/