House and Senate Republicans planning to object to the acceptance of Electoral College votes are scrambling to get on the same page about which states will be up for debate.
The result of coordination will determine how long it will take for the chambers to debate the objections, which could take days, in a final, virtually certain-to-fail attempt to overturn the result of the presidential election in favor of President Trump rather than President-elect Joe Biden.
The House Republicans leading the effort to raise the objections, including Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, want objections and debate on six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
But the more than one dozen Senate Republicans who are planning to object, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, are not necessarily on board with objecting to all six states, Politico reported.
The process for objecting to accepting the Electoral College results requires at least one House representative and one senator in the joint session of Congress to object to the count from a state before the two chambers split up again, separately debate the objection for up to two hours, and then vote on whether to accept the results.
With each state being debated separately, if there are six states up for debate, the time to debate and vote on the objections could take at least 12 hours, Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told the Capitol press pool on Monday — and social distancing measures in place, attempting to stagger members of Congress as they cast votes, will add more time.
It appears that at least three states will have objections from members of both the House and Senate.
Georgia Sen. Kelley Loeffler on Monday announced that she would object to the results from her own state. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the first senator to announce that he would object to results, said in his initial statement that he took issue with results from “some states, particularly Pennsylvania.” And Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will reportedly object to Arizona.
The House Republicans planning to object to the results are still working on getting senators on board with the full slate of six states.
“It is somewhat of a fluid process,” New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew told the Washington Examiner. “If I was to guess now, I would think it would be all six states.”
Jordan told CNN that he is still having “lots of conversations with senators,” adding, “we’re doing three, but we are hoping for six.”
