Florida Sen. Rick Scott will ‘likely’ vote against Pennsylvania’s Biden electors

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott will “likely” vote against the certification of the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, Florida’s junior senator announced Wednesday morning.

“The situation in Pennsylvania is of particular concern to me, and I will likely vote to sustain the objection to their slate of electors,” he said in a statement released by his office shortly before Congress convened to certify the results of each state’s presidential election.

Scott now appears likely to join — at least in part — more than a dozen Republican U.S. senators who have said they will challenge the results in several battleground states that were key to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s win, Pennsylvania among them.

The effort is all but guaranteed to fail. But President Donald Trump continues to pressure the GOP to attempt to overturn the results of the election, claiming falsely that he won. Dozens of Republican House members also plan to object, setting off debates and eventually votes.

The results of other states, including Arizona and Georgia, are also expected to be contested.

Scott singled out Pennsylvania, he said, due to a decision by the state’s Democratic administration to accept mail ballots that were sent by Election Day but arrived after polls closed. The move was challenged and upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey recently noted that the roughly 10,000 late-arriving ballots in question amount to a fraction of Biden’s winning total in the state.

Scott did not indicate how he would vote in relation to the results for those states, saying only that he “will listen to any and all objections that are raised” and “pay careful attention to the evidence and arguments presented by both sides.”

Florida’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Marco Rubio, has not indicated how he will vote Wednesday.