(NewsNation) — Despite a handful of Democratic House members’ comments, two veteran party operatives dismiss the idea that Democrats may refuse to certify a victory by Donald Trump.
“There will be no organized efforts among Democrats to not certify the election,” said NewsNation political contributor Chris Hahn. “Scattered objections is not an organized effort,” he told NewsNation’s “On Balance.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told Axios that if Trump “won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it.” But he also told the website he “definitely” doesn’t assume that Trump would use free, fair and honest means to secure a victory.
House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., told Axios that Democrats would certify a Trump victory, “assuming everything goes the way we expect it to. We have to see how it all happens,” but added, “my expectation is that we would.”
“There is a clear difference (between) one or two members objecting on the floor of the House of Representatives … and what Donald Trump did, which was an organized and armed riot on the Capitol,” Jonathan Kott, a former adviser to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, told “On Balance.”
Hahn was even more direct.
“Kamala Harris will not say, ‘I unilaterally decide that this election doesn’t count’ like Donald Trump wanted his vice president to do — and then tried to have him hanged because he wouldn’t do it,” he said.
Trump has made recent comments that appear to set the stage for a large number of objections to the 2020 results.
He claimed that the overseas ballot program for military members and Americans living overseas has no citizenship or identity verification.
He called early voting in Pennsylvania “stupid,” and again attacked mail-in voting, even as fellow Republicans have pushed loyalists to take advantage of it.
He wanted House Republicans to threaten a government shutdown if Congress didn’t pass a bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. A 1996 law made it illegal for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, and it has always been extremely rare. A survey after the 2016 election found just 30 noncitizen votes out of 23.5 million votes cast.