In rejecting states’ Electoral College votes, South Florida lawmakers give credence to the mob | Editorial
Pennsylvania has been a hotbed of rejection for President Trump, who had refused to see that he is a loser. Time and again, since he lost his bid for re-election, he swore he was cheated out of a win because of voting irregularities, or outright fraud, in states where he expected to beat Joe Biden.
Time and again, the courts said No to Trump and his proxies. The U.S Supreme Court said, No, we won’t block certification of Pennsylvania’s results. No, we won’t throw out its election results. And even when Trump scored a win — a Pennsylvania judge ruled that first-time voters were supposed to confirm their IDs with county boards of election by Nov. 9, not Nov. 12 — the president lost when the state Supreme Court overturned that decision. The U.S. Supreme Court is taking a look.
At least four lawsuits in Arizona, similarly went nowhere.
None of this was enough, however, for several Florida Republicans, including Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez and Sen. Rick Scott. In failing to acknowledge the reality of the election results, they sent a foolhardy message that, not only could the voting process not be trusted, they implied that the only candidate who was hurt was President Trump. What about the Republicans who won across the country? Their names were on the same ballot.
Trump incites
We give them credit for one thing: They registered their disapproval in accordance with the Constitution. That’s more than can be said about the thugs who did Trump’s bidding in a violent riot at the Capitol on Wednesday. It was an attempted coup, whipped up by the president himself — “Be wild,” he told these extremists — and they were. They were also criminals, and must be treated as such.
But what of the congressional members — some from South Florida — who continue to side with him, insisting that the bedrock of our democracy — free elections — cannot be trusted?
Sen. Rick Scott and Reps. Carlos Gimenez and Mario Diaz-Balart all voted to decertify the votes of a variety of states, giving undue support to President Trump’s baseless claims. For his part, Sen. Marco Rubio understood the folly of doing so when he spoke on the floor of Congress before voting in the wee hours, saying he was not convinced electoral mischief had occurred.
“Now is no longer the time for that kind of message,” he said. Rubio did not vote to decertify voter results of any state. He seemed to understand, finally, what was at stake in this fractured nation.
Making a statement
Scott had hinted early on, without explanation, that he would vote to decertify the final votes of several states; he did so for Pennsylvania. Diaz-Balart and Gimenez voted to decertify Arizona and Pennsylvania’s results.
In a statement, Diaz-Balart said: “I have become convinced that the electors in some states were selected in an unconstitutional manner. I simply cannot vote to uphold a slate of electors under those circumstances,” Diaz-Balart said, although he added that he accepted that Biden was our new president.
Gimenez said he voted to highlight the need for many states across the country to undergo important electoral reforms: “After keeping an open mind, letting the arguments play out on the House floor, and weighing their merits, I objected to the certification of electors from states I believe violated Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution after their state-level executive officials bypassed electoral statutes passed by their state legislatures.”
We think electoral reforms, where needed, can be secured without sending a message that gives credence to thugs — whether the ones who stormed the Capitol or the one who cheered them on from the Oval Office.
