Page:Congressional Record 167(4).pdf/9

January 6, 2021 judicial fiat to allow voter registration. These 10 days were added after voting had already begun. This is completely indefensible. You cannot change the rules of an election while it is underway and expect the American people to trust it.

Now, in this 10-day period, at least 30,000 new voters were registered to vote in Arizona. All of these votes are unconstitutional. It does not matter if they voted for President Trump or if they voted for Vice President Biden. They did not register in time for the election. The law states October 5. Either we have laws or we do not.

If we allow State election laws as set forth by the State legislatures to be ignored and manipulated on the whims of partisan lawsuits, unelected bureaucrats, unlawful procedures, and arbitrary rules, then our constitutional Republic will cease to exist.

The oath I took this past Sunday to defend and support the Constitution makes it necessary for me to object to this travesty. Otherwise, the laws passed by the legislative branch merely become suggestions to be accepted, rejected, or manipulated by those who did not pass them.

Madam Speaker, I have constituents outside of this building right now. I promised my voters to be their voice. In this branch of government in which I now serve, it is my separate but equal obligation to weigh in on this election and object.

Are we not a government of, by, and for the people?

They know that this election is not right; and as their Representative, I am sent here to represent them. I will not allow the people to be ignored.

Madam Speaker, it is my duty under the U.S. Constitution to object to the counting of the electoral votes of the State of Arizona. The Members who stand here today and accept the results of this concentrated, coordinated, partisan effort by Democrats, where every fraudulent vote cancels out the vote of an honest America, has sided with extremists on the left.

The United States Congress needs to make an informed decision, and that starts with this objection. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. ). Mr. MAST. Madam Speaker, I rise as well to support the objection, and I rise with the simple question: Can the Chair honestly tell Americans, with a pending Supreme Court case over legal observers not being allowed to observe and inspect signatures, that the laws and the Constitution of that State were not violated to change voting outcomes?

Madam Speaker, I will wait for a response.

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. ) has 25 seconds remaining.

Mr. MAST. Madam Speaker, I will repeat my question.

Can you honestly tell Americans, with a pending Supreme Court case over legal observers not being able to observe and inspect signatures, that the laws and Constitution of Arizona were not violated to change voting outcomes?

And I will wait for a response. The SPEAKER. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. NEGUSE. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the objection.

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Colorado is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. NEGUSE. Madam Speaker, today is an important day. In 1862, during the depths of the Civil War, President Lincoln submitted his annual message to Congress, to this body, and in it, he wrote the following: “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. … The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. … We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth.”

Madam Speaker, we gather today to ensure the survival of our grand American experiment, the greatest democracy this world has ever known, and there are millions of people watching today’s proceedings. The eyes of the world are on us now, my colleagues, wondering if we will keep the faith, wondering if our constitutional Republic will hold.

Will we adhere to our Constitution, that solemn visionary document that has guided us so well for so long and enabled the peaceful transfer of power for the last 230 years?

Will we continue to be a country premised on the consent of the governed, a Congress that respects the will of the people, and a Republic that will endure?

Madam Speaker, those are the questions before us today. With respect to my new colleague from Colorado, the question is not whether Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States. He clearly was. The people of Arizona, like so much of the country, spoke clearly and resoundingly. They voted in record numbers, and over 81 million Americans selected Joe Biden as the next President.

Now, today, we hear from some in this Chamber—not all, but some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle—vague claims of fraud.

No substance.

No evidence.

No facts.

No explanation for why over 88 judges across this land have rejected the very same claims.

Madam Speaker, the bottom line is this. As my colleague, Representative, so eloquently put it, the people have spoken, and that is why, on December 14, the electoral college met to certify the election of a duly elected President, just as they have done for centuries during terrible world wars, recessions, depressions, plagues, and pandemics.

They met their duty, and they once again rose to the occasion and certified the election. And the question now is, will we do ours?

Now, I know there are many textualists among us, many of my colleagues who would understand that the Constitution must guide our work today. And the Constitution is crystal clear: Our duty today is a narrow one.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 reads: “The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be the President.”

That is it, period. Our job is not to replace the judgment made by the American people with our own. Yet, that is precisely what so many of my House and Senate Republican colleagues ask this body to do, to substitute their judgment for the expressed will of the American people.

In America, we don’t do that. In the United States, we accept the results of free and fair elections.

Madam Speaker, we don’t ignore the will of the voters and attempt to install a preferred candidate into power. That doesn’t happen here.

Madam Speaker, I will close with this. Our duty, our task, is a very simple one: to honor the voice of the people, to honor our Constitution, to count the votes, to certify this election, and begin to heal this great country of ours.

I pray each of us may find the courage to do so. Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the objection.

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Louisiana is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, we have a solemn responsibility today. We must vote to sustain objections to slates of electors submitted by States that we genuinely believe clearly violated the Constitution in the Presidential election of 2020.

This is the threshold legal question before us, and it is an issue before us for the State of Arizona. We have to repeat this for emphasis because a lot of people seem to be confused.

Because judges and not the State legislature changed the rules of the election, Arizona clearly violated the plain language of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution in its selection of Presidential electors.

The Framers of our Constitution recognized that elections were susceptible to corruption. We all know that. So, how did they fix it? How did they provide for that? They created the electoral college as a safeguard, and they expressly empowered State legislatures to ensure the integrity of our unique election system.

Only the State legislatures, because they are a full body of representatives and not rogue officials, were given the authority to direct the manner of appointing Presidential electors because it was so important.