Ted Cruz’s Trip to Mexico Looks Bad. But This Is Worse.

Certainly, it was an irregular voting year. In some states, the pandemic prompted more Americans to vote by mail than the total number who voted at all in 2016. But election officials in every single state have said repeatedly that, despite the many challenges 2020 brought, they saw no evidence of fraud that could have altered the outcome of the election.

And after votes were cast, when Congress attempted to use its best tool of self-defense, they let Trump go unpunished for his attempted power grab.

Americans ought to remember the names of those Republicans who objected to the outcome of a free and fair election, the representatives who stuck by Trump in the impeachment vote, and the senators who acquitted him after his trial.

The Senate

TED CRUZ, Texas

• Objected to counting of Arizona’s electoral votes
• Objected to counting of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes
• Voted to acquit Trump on impeachment

Cruz was the first senator to raise an objection during the joint session of Congress on January 6. He has repeatedly fueled Trump’s lies about widespread irregularities and fraud in the election, telling Fox News’s Sean Hannity the night before the Capitol riot that if members of Congress voted to certify the election, “what an awful lot of voters are going to hear from that is you don’t think voter fraud is real.” Cruz repeated Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the Senate, lending legitimacy to the lie that Joe Biden wasn’t duly elected. He also objected to Pennsylvania’s votes after the violence, and still maintains that he did the “right thing.”

Josh Hawley, Missouri

• Objected to counting of Arizona’s electoral votes
• Objected to counting of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes
• Voted to acquit Trump on impeachment

Hawley was the first senator to publicly state that he would object to the election results, saying he wanted to “highlight the failure of some states, including notably Pennsylvania, to follow their own election laws” (he is notably not an elected official in Pennsylvania)—and was pictured raising a fist in a seeming sign of solidarity with protesters before they breached the Capitol on January 6. He still objected to the count after Congress reconvened, but provided no evidence of fraud in either Arizona or Pennsylvania. Like Cruz, he says he has no regrets, insisting that his constituents’ concerns deserve to be heard.

Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mississippi

• Objected to counting of Arizona’s electoral votes
• Objected to counting of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes
• Voted to acquit Trump on impeachment

Hyde-Smith twice objected to certifying the election results, blaming her constituents for her vote: “The people I represent do not believe the presidential election was constitutional and cannot accept the Electoral College decision,” she said. She then claimed to be “alarmed with the erosion of integrity of the electoral process”—erosion she contributed to by perpetuating claims of fraud.

John Kennedy, Louisiana

• Objected to counting of Arizona’s electoral votes
• Voted to acquit Trump on impeachment