Pence declares Biden winner of the presidential election after Congress finally counts electoral votes

The House voted to reject a challenge to counting Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes for Biden, just as the Senate had earlier on Thursday morning.

After about two hours of debate, more than 130 Republicans in the House voted in favor of the challenge. The objection fell on a 282-to-138 vote.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who spoke on behalf of 80 House members, had objected to the Pennsylvania results alongside Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). The objection triggered the joint session of Congress to adjourn so the separate chambers could debate.

An impassioned speech from Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) nearly caused an early-morning fistfight to break out between two other House lawmakers during the debate over Pennsylvania’s electoral vote.

Lamb said that the GOP objectors to Biden’s win didn’t need to “strip this Congress of its dignity” any more after pro-Trump rioters attacked the Capitol on Wednesday.

“We know that that attack today, it didn’t materialize out of nowhere, it was inspired by lies — the same lies that you’re hearing in this room tonight,” Lamb said. “The members who are repeating those lies should be ashamed of themselves, their constituents should be ashamed of them.”

The two top Republicans in the House of Representatives — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (La.) — voted in favor of challenging Arizona’s electoral college votes for Biden.

The third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), rejected the objection.

The vote was seen as a test of who stood with Trump and who backed the election results.

The challenge was defeated late Wednesday night, with 303 members of Congress voting to reject it and only 121 in favor. All 121 votes in favor of the objection came from GOP members, including prominent Trump supporters such as California’s Darrell Issa and Devin Nunes, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida’s Matt Gaetz.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) claimed the debate in Congress early Thursday was not exclusively about the Pennsylvania electoral vote but whether democracy itself would survive.

“I always just assumed our democracy would naturally endure,” Boyle said. “I never questioned it until the last two years.”

His comments came as the House reconvened around 12:30 a.m. Thursday due to the objection to the Pennsylvania electoral vote. At the time of the pause, Congress had certified 244 of Biden’s 306 electoral college votes.

As the House began debate over some Republicans’ objection to awarding Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to Biden, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) read aloud former president George W. Bush’s statement condemning the “reckless behavior” since the election that resulted in the day’s attack on the Capitol.

“Now, I have been at a loss, Madam Speaker, to explain what happened today,” Neguse said. “But there’s a statement that I found that largely summarized my thoughts on the matter.”

Only after reading the statement in full did Neguse reveal they were Bush’s words.

The Senate voted to reject a challenge to counting Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes for Joe Biden shortly after the chamber gathered.

The challenge fell on a 92-to-7 vote. Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Josh Hawley (Mo.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Miss.), Cynthia M. Lummis (Wyo.), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Rick Scott (Fla.) and Tommy Tuberville (Ala.) voted to object. Vice President Pence reported the final vote tally, stating, “The objection is not sustained.”

Hawley had objected to the Pennsylvania results, alongside Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who spoke on behalf of 80 House members. The objection triggered the joint session of Congress to adjourn so the separate chambers could debate. Without debate, the Senate began voting on the objection immediately.

The counting of the electoral votes came to a halt just after midnight when a GOP member of the House and the Senate objected to the results from Pennsylvania, triggering separate two-hour debates and votes in the two chambers.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), speaking on behalf of 80 House members, objected to the Pennsylvania results and was joined by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

“Sadly but resolutely, I object to the electoral votes of my beloved Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on the grounds of multiple constitutional infractions that they were not under all of the known circumstances regularly given,” Perry said.

In a joint session of Congress late Wednesday night, some Republican House members attempted to object to the certification of Georgia’s electoral votes. However, with no member of the Senate signing on, the attempt failed.

Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) said his GOP colleagues were objecting to his state’s results “on the grounds that the election conducted on Nov. 3 was faulty and fraudulent.”

Hice further claimed that the Georgia secretary of state had unlawfully changed the state’s election process without General Assembly approval, “thereby setting the stage for an unprecedented amount of fraud and irregularities.” There has been no evidence of voter fraud in Georgia or any other state that would have changed the outcome of the election.