6 Pennsylvania GOP officials refuse to sign letter asking Congress to challenge election results

Several GOP lawmakers in Pennsylvania said their signatures were wrongly added to a letter demanding that President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state be challenged in Congress.

The signatures of 75 Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate were included in a letter sent to the state’s Congressional delegation Friday, demanding that Biden’s victory be challenged when the US House of Representatives and the Senate meet for a joint session to finalize the results early in the next. month.

However, a “clerical error” led to the inclusion of the signatures of at least six GOP lawmakers without their permission. The signatures of state officials Chris Quinn, Todd Polinchock, Megan Schroeder, Wendi Thomas, KC Tomlinson and Tom Mehaffie were all incorrectly included in the letter, according to Pennsylvania Capital-Star reporter Stephen Caruso.

“We were informed that my name had been put on a letter by mistake,” Quinn confirmed to Newsweek. “All I can say is there was a clerical error in Harrisburg. They made a mistake and they have since withdrawn the letter.”

The letter is the latest attempt by a number of Pennsylvania Republicans to undo President Donald Trump’s election defeat. GOP leaders in the state recently rejected suggestions that they could appoint their own list of Trump-loyal constituency voters despite Biden’s victory, pointing out that such a move is prohibited by US law. State.

Other attempts to challenge the election results, without providing any plausible way to reverse the result, have failed in Pennsylvania. Only 49 of 137 GOP lawmakers signed non-binding resolutions opposing Biden’s victory last month, while a petition calling for a special session of the state legislature failed when only 32 Republicans signed. .

Biden won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes and his victory was certified by state officials on November 24. In 2016, Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 44,292 votes. Although the president and some of his allies have continued to claim without evidence that Biden’s victory was based on massive electoral fraud, repeated court challenges and attempts to overturn the results in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have so far failed.

The election could be contested in Congress during the joint session on January 6, which will see the Electoral College results certified, although the result is unlikely to change. Individual challenges would have to be approved by both a member of the House and the Senate, which could easily happen given the current political climate. However, it would be a tall order for any challenge to succeed, as a majority of both houses would have to vote for a challenge for it to come forward.

The Democrat-controlled House is unlikely to support challenges to overturn the election results. If the Republican-controlled House and Senate disagree on a specific challenge, the state governor in question could have the final say. This eventuality is unlikely to play out as several GOP senators have already acknowledged Biden’s victory and have expressed no desire to undo a relatively decisive Biden victory.

With 270 electoral college votes required to win the presidency, Biden got 306 votes to 232 for Trump, the same margin Trump had over Clinton in 2016. Trump described his victory as a “landslide victory” despite losing the popular vote national by 2.9 million. . Biden got over 7 million more votes than Trump in the current election, winning with over 81.2 million votes in total, representing – by far – the most presidential candidates in the world. history of the United States.