JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A House committee plans to meet on Monday to discuss a resolution calling on Congress to reject the 2020 presidential election results.
Filed by Republican state Rep. Justin Hill Thursday, HR 2 says the lower chamber does not have “faith in the validity” of the results in six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It asks Congress to refuse to accept the electoral votes for those battleground states — which went for Vice President Joe Biden.
House Speaker Elijah Haahr referred the resolution to the Special Committee on Government Oversight, noting he was treating it just like any other resolution. The committee — chaired by GOP Rep. Robert Ross who did sign onto the resultion already — plans to meet to discuss the resolution Monday at 5 p.m.. Should it pass, the full House could be called to convene to take up the resolution.
The House has not officially adjourned from the extraordinary session called to tackle a supplemental budget to distribute federal money related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This resolution, however, does not appear to fall into the scope of the special session. It also does not seem to have support from the upper chamber or second floor.
Also on Monday, Missouri’s electors will meet in the state Capitol to officially cast their votes for President Donald Trump. Trump won Missouri by nearly 16 points, although former Vice President Joe Biden won the election.
Hill’s resolution has been co-signed by 66 other Republicans, he said on social media. There are 113 Republican members in the House.
Rep. Rasheen Aldridge, a Democrat from St. Louis, said the move was a waste of taxpayer money, especially since U.S. Attorney General William Barr said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have altered the outcome of the presidential election. Trump has not conceded the election.
The resolution comes on the heels of Attorney General Eric Schmitt throwing his weight behind a Texas lawsuit challenging the election results in four battleground states.
His office filed an amicus brief Wednesday with the U.S. Supreme Court, leading 16 other states, in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s challenge of the results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Texas filed the suit with the nation’s highest court earlier this week in what’s largely been seen as a longshot bid. Paxton alleged the four battleground states erroneously used the COVID-19 pandemic to circumvent their state legislatures and “unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes” — thus changing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
“The allegations in the Bill of Complaints raise important questions about election integrity and public confidence in the administration of Presidential elections,” the recently-filed amicus brief said.
Chuck Hatfield, a partner at Stinson LLP, called the decision to join the matter “very unusual.”
“The Missouri attorney general is asking the Supreme Court to invalidate what other states have done. I don’t think he’d want Pennsylvania suing us and trying to invalidate what we do in our state,” Hatfield told The Missouri Times. “This is really new territory, that a state is going to reach in and try to invalidate another state’s decisions on voting. … It’s a whole new theory, and I don’t think it has ever happened before.”
Kaitlyn Schallhorn was the editor in chief of The Missouri Times from 2020-2022. She joined the newspaper in early 2019 after working as a reporter for Fox News in New York City.
Throughout her career, Kaitlyn has covered political campaigns across the U.S., including the 2016 presidential election, and humanitarian aid efforts in Africa and the Middle East.
She is a native of Missouri who studied journalism at Winthrop University in South Carolina. She is also an alumna of the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C.
Contact Kaitlyn at kaitlyn@themissouritimes.com.
