Byron York’s Daily Memo: The Jan. 6 votes

THE JAN. 6 VOTES. It’s not unusual to hear Democrats and their allies in the press say the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters came perilously close to overthrowing the U.S. government. On that day, American democracy was “hanging by a thread,” according to CNN’s Don Lemon, who was echoing sentiments heard elsewhere around the media.

Here’s the truth. The Capitol riot was an appalling and shameful event for which hundreds of participants — over 700 so far — are facing criminal charges. But it did not come close to bringing down American democracy. One big reason is that so many Republican members of Congress refused to go along with then-President Donald Trump’s effort to challenge Electoral College results.

There were four votes taken on those challenges — one each in the House and Senate on challenges to results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. None came anywhere close to passing.

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All the votes came after the riot was over and the House and Senate had reconvened. The House was controlled by a narrow Democratic majority, as it is today, but the Senate was still under Republican control, with the GOP holding a 51-seat majority. (The Jan. 5, 2021, Georgia Senate elections, both won by Democrats, were the day before, and Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock would not be sworn in until Jan. 20.)

In the Senate, the vote on the Arizona challenge was 6 to 93 — six senators in favor and 93 senators opposed. The six were Republicans — Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Cindy Hyde-Smith, John Kennedy, Roger Marshall, and Tommy Tuberville. The other 45 Republicans in the Senate voted against the Arizona challenge.

The Senate vote on the Pennsylvania challenge was similar: 7 to 92. The seven Republicans who supported the challenge had changed slightly — they were Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Cynthia Lummis, Marshall, Rick Scott, and Tuberville. The other 44 Republicans voted against the Pennsylvania challenge.

In the House, there were many more Republicans who supported the challenge. But the vote on the Arizona challenge was still 121 to 303. The 121 votes for the challenge were, of course, Republicans. But 83 House Republicans voted against the Arizona challenge, and five did not vote.

On the Pennsylvania challenge, the House vote was 138 to 282. Sixty-four Republicans voted against the challenge, and seven did not vote.

It is still not entirely clear why so many House Republicans chose to support the challenges, given that all the states had certified their results, Trump had lost his various lawsuits over the election, and there was no definitive evidence of voting irregularities significant enough to change the result in any state.

Some Republicans felt they stood on a precedent already established by Democrats. After all, some House Democrats objected to the certification of Electoral College results in the last three presidential elections won by Republicans. In 2001, after George W. Bush had won the Florida recount, some House Democrats tried to halt the electoral vote counting. Democrats did it again in 2005, after Bush won reelection. And in 2017, after Trump’s election, a number of Democrats objected to certification. (In fact, one of the members of today’s Jan. 6 committee, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, was one of those who objected to certification in 2017.)

In 2005, after Democrats alleged voting irregularities in Ohio, Democratic objections actually came to a vote in the House. It was no small thing; decertifying Ohio could have thrown the election to Democratic candidate John Kerry. The move failed on a 31 to 267 vote. The 31 voting to stop the electoral count were, of course, Democrats, including Rep. Bennie Thompson, now chairman of the Jan. 6 committee. Eighty-eight Democrats voted against the challenge. In an indication of what was perhaps a lack of interest in the subject, 80 Democrats did not vote. In the Senate, the vote on the Ohio challenge was 1 to 74, the one vote in favor of the challenge being California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.

The big picture: Challenges to Electoral College results, provided they have some support in both House and Senate, have to be voted on. That is what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. The votes in House and Senate were strongly against the Trump challenges. Those votes included all Democrats and large numbers of Republicans. Democracy was not hanging by a thread. It was, instead, working.

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