Last Updated on January 2, 2021, 8:19 PM | Published: January 2, 2021
United States Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma is joining with six other sitting U.S. senators and four senators-elect in demanding an election commission be formed before Inauguration Day on January 20.
The purpose of the commission would be to investigate unproven election fraud accusations being made by President Donald Trump, some politicians, and various members of the right-wing media.
They are saying that if their demands are not met, they intend to vote against the Senate certifying Joe Biden as the winner in the 2020 presidential election.
Those senators or the Republican Party are not expected to win but the effort has picked up more adherents on Capitol Hill in recent days.
Based on emotions
The group offered no other argument of fact in support of their demand except that many people in their party are still doubting election results and are upset.
The demand of what to be audited is also vague only calling for results in “disputed states” to be investigated.
Every state has certified their election results after verifying their accuracy and some, like Georgia, have completed an audit of paper ballots.
Members of the group include Lankford, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Steve Daines of Montana, and Mike Braun of Indiana, and Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
Lankford’s argument
Lankford’s argument persists as to the unfounded and unproven so-called problems with the election only in states that went for Joseph Biden, the Democratic Party candidate who won over 81 million votes, the most votes any candidate for president has ever had, and over 7 million more than Trump.
“Millions of Americans, including thousands of Oklahomans, still have significant questions about the November 3 election process,” Lankford argued in a Facebook post Saturday morning.
After going through a litany of supposed problems that have not been proven, Lankford writes, “These are not questions that exist in the dark corners of the internet, but ones I hear at the grocery store, the gas station, through text messages, and on phone calls. For the sake of the nation’s unity, these questions should not be ignored.”
The group and Lankford have not acknowledged the tedious recounts and audits that have happened in some of the “disputed” states like Pennsylvania and Georgia.
No evidence presented
Attorneys for President Donald Trump have gone to court nearly 60 times challenging the results in a variety of ways even approaching the U.S. Supreme Court which denied their requests.
In Saturday’s statement for the group, Texas Senator Ted Cruz acknowledges but also dismisses the review of even the Supreme Court that saw no reason to get involved in the clearly political dispute.
“Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined,” wrote Cruz.
Significantly, Trump’s attorneys have carefully avoided claiming fraud even after saying so in news conferences. Even when judges have directly asked if they were claiming fraud, they have insisted that was not what they were claiming leading to the question of whether they had any evidence of fraud they could claim in court.
If an attorney intentionally misleads a judge in a proceeding with lies or obfuscation, they can be charged and given jail time. But, there is no jail time for being misleading in a news conference.
1877 Election Commission?
The original statement for the group and Lankford, in his Facebook page post, called for an Election Commission and cited the 1877 Election Commmission as a model.
However, there is at least one key element of the 1877 Election Commission missing in the current group’s demands.
Their demands leave out any mention of the key element of the 1877 Election Commission, which was to have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats even extending to the Supreme Court justices to serve according to their having been appointed by a Republican or Democrat.
The omission then leaves open a question of just how impartial the group would want the commission to be.
“Division” as a reason
Lankford cited division in the country as a reason for the commission.
“Everyone should see the division currently in the nation, and we all should have an interest in providing a path to resolution,” said Lankford.
Lankford did not acknowledge the sharp divisions that have been formed by Trump’s own urging over his presidency in statements to the media, in raucous rallies around the country, and on Twitter.
Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.
