Members of Congress returned to the certification process after more than 6 hours of suspension. Photo: Amanda Voisard / POOL / EFE
By: EFE 14 from January 2021
WASHINGTON – The Senate on Thursday rejected an objection to the result of the November elections in the state of Pennsylvania, the last obstacle which he plans to review before Congress ratifies the victory of US President-elect Joe Biden.
By 92 votes in favor and 7 against, the Senate voted to dismiss an objection to the results of the elections in Pennsylvania that had been introduced by Republican legislators in the Lower House with the support of a conservative senator, Josh Hawley.
“We do not expect more votes tonight ”, said the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell , after the vote.
That means, a Once the House votes the motion on Pennsylvania , no more senator will endorse a possible objection in another key state, and the Joint session of Congress will ratify this morning the victory of Joe Biden .
There was never any prospect that the objections presented in Congress would succeed, since each of them must pass a vote in plenary and the Democrats, Biden’s party, are a majority in the House of Representatives.
However, the outgoing president, Donald Trump , insisted on putting pressure on legislators and his own vice president, Mike Pence , so that powers that do not correspond to them under the Constitution and interfere in a session that is normally simply a formal procedure.
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That “failed insurrection”, in McConnell’s words, dissuaded most of his allies in the Senate from their plans to raise or endorse objections to the result in several key states where Biden won.
Only Hawley went ahead with his plan to challenge the outcome in Pennsylvania, though six other Republican senators stood after his side in the vote on the issue, in the full Senate.
Before Pennsylvania’s turn came, no Republican senator supported the attempt by multiple congressmen to challenge the results in three other key states where Biden won: Georgia, Michigan and Nevada.
Under US law, to trigger a debate and vote in Congress on the possibility of rejecting the result in a state, it is necessary to have at least one congressman and one senator to support the idea.
The objection in the Pennsylvania case caused the joint session in Congress to go into recess, so that each of the two houses would debate separately on e the issue, although the Senate went directly to vote.
A few hours before, Congress also voted in favor of respecting the results of the elections in Arizona: the attempt to reject what was voted in that state failed due to 92 votes against 6 in the Senate and by 303 against 121 in the House of Representatives.
The debate on the outcome in Arizona had started in the early afternoon, but was interrupted by the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters.
Upon resuming the session six hours later, once the Capitol was cleared, both houses of Congress continued the debate on Arizona, and then on the rest of the states that voted on November 3 to elect Biden.