COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman has become the third member of the state's congressional delegation to support a challenge to certifying the 2020 Presidential Election.
Norman, who represents South Carolina's Fifth Congressional District, issued a statement Thursday. He joins Reps. Joe Wilson and Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina in saying they will not vote to certify the Electoral College victory by President-Elect Joe Biden on January 6 when Congress meets.
"Because we don’t have a thorough accounting of all the various reports of voting irregularities, as well as transparent evidence that the election in several key states was fair overall – and remedied where it wasn’t fair – I will be joining other colleagues from the House of Representatives to formally challenge the Electoral College results from those states," Norman stated.
Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress certifies the winner of the Electoral College. Ordinarily, this is essentially a rubber stamp to the Electoral College vote, which happened back on December 14. That showed Biden defeating President Donald Trump 306-232, the same number seen after votes were certified in all 50 states weeks earlier.
But this week Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri became the first member of Congress to say he'd challenge those results. He was soon followed by a member of the House, and now other representatives have signed on to the effort.
He did this based on still baseless claims that there was massive voter fraud in several key battleground states that tipped the election to Biden. Those states' election leaders, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, have said they have found no evidence of any wrongdoing that would overturn the election. Efforts to prove these claims have also failed to gain traction in lower courts all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wilson, Norman, and Duncan also supported a push by Texas' attorney general to challenge the election results. That effort was dismissed by the Supreme Court without a hearing.
In a CBS story on Hawley's decision to object, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close associate of President Trump, is quoted as saying challenging the votes would "probably do more harm than good."
Political experts have said the effort has little to no chance of succeeding, which Norman himself seemed to acknowledge. "I do not want to offer false promises," Norman wrote. "I need to be frank when I say that any such challenge on January 6th will be a steep uphill battle."
But Norman went on to say that Congress has a responsibility to ensure that federal elections are fair and transparent.
You can read his full statement below: