Top congressional Democrats told Axios on Thursday they would not commit to certifying the 2024 election if former President Donald Trump wins.
The failure to commit to certifying the election would prove many members to be hypocrites, including House Oversight Committee ranking member and former January 6 committee member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who told Axios that he is unsure if he’ll certify a Trump win.
Raskin denied Trump won the 2016 election when he objected to Trump’s electors in 2017.
If Trump “won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it,” Raskin said, assuming the election was free, fair and honest. “I definitely don’t assume that,” he added. “Democrats don’t engage in election fraud and election fabrication.”
A video surfaced in September of a panel discussion in February 2024 in which Raskin speculated that Congress would invalidate a Trump election victory, even though it could be at the risk of “civil war.”
“It is not clear whether Raskin was actually outlining a plan of action, or rather using a hypothetical to argue that the U.S. Supreme Court was placing what he considered an undue burden on Congress to keep Trump out of office,” Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak reported.
House Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-MA) also told Axios that Democrats would only certify a Trump victory “assuming everything goes the way we expect it to … We have to see how it all happens.” McGovern also objected to Trump’s electors in 2017.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who objected to George W. Bush’s victory in 2005, said she did not “know what kind of shenanigans he [Trump] is planning … We would have to, in any election … make sure that all the rules have been followed.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has not yet answered if she would support certifying a Trump victory, although she has been highly critical of Republicans who objected to President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
For years, Democrats claimed Republicans are election deniers because they questioned the entirety of elections, but Democrats have also denied election outcomes over 150 times.
Biden and Democrats have a long history of contesting election outcomes, including Hillary Clinton and Barbara Lee (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who have all cast doubt on every single Republican presidential victory in the last two decades. In fact, every single Democrat president since 1977 has questioned the legitimacy of U.S. elections, according to the RNC. Biden cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 midterms.
In both 2013 and 2016, Biden claimed that Gore won the 2000 presidential election. In May 2019, Biden said he “absolutely agrees” that Trump is an “illegitimate president.” According to a pool report, Biden claimed in 2013: “This man [Gore] was elected president of the United States of America.”
Democrats have not just denied election results. They have labeled elections as “stolen,” “fraudulent,” and a “coup d’etat.” In 2002, Gore claimed he “would have won” if every vote in Florida was counted and that he “absolutely” believed he would become president after the ordered recount. In 2016, Hillary Clinton said that the Supreme Court “took away a presidency” in Bush v. Gore.
Democrats repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2004 election. In 2006, then-DNC Chairman Howard Dean stated that he was “not confident that the election in Ohio was fairly decided” in 2004. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said it is “appropriate” to have the debate concerning the 2004 election and claimed that there were “legitimate concerns” regarding the “integrity” of U.S. elections. Then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) cast doubt on the security of electronic voting machines in the 2004 election, saying he was “worried” that some machines do not have a paper trail.
Democrats have also cast doubt on the 2016 election. In 2017, seven House Democrats tried to object to the 2016 election electoral votes. After President Trump’s victory in 2016, 67 Democrats boycotted his inauguration, with some claiming Trump’s victory was not legitimate.
In September 2017, Hillary Clinton said she would not “rule out” questioning the legitimacy of the 2016 election. In October 2020, Clinton claimed that the 2016 presidential election was not conducted legitimately, saying, “We still don’t really know what happened.”
Most recently, Democrats supported Stacey Abrams in her stolen election claims. Hillary Clinton said Stacey Abrams “would have won” Georgia’s gubernatorial race “if she had a fair election” and that Stacey Abrams “should be governor” but was “deprived of the votes [she] otherwise would have gotten.” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said, “I think that Stacey Abrams’ election is being stolen from her.” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) contended that “if Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said “the evidence seems to suggest” the race was stolen from Stacey Abrams.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
