Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia will oppose the certification of the Electoral College results on Wednesday, she said in a statement released Monday evening.
“On January 6th, I will vote to give President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve and support the objection to the Electoral College certification process,” Loeffler said in a statement on her official Twitter account.
Loeffler will launch an effort separate from a dozen of her fellow Republican senators who have already said they will challenge Democratic President-elect Joe Biden’s win during the certification vote. At least 140 House Republicans will also object to the certification.
Just minutes before Loeffler’s tweet, her fellow Georgia Republican, Sen. David Perdue, tweeted a clip of his interview on Fox News on Sunday in which he said he is urging his colleagues to object.
“I’m encouraging my colleagues to object. This is something that the American people demand right now,” he said. “There are huge irregularities in Georgia. They need to be investigated, and they need to be corrected, in my opinion.”
Both Loeffler and Perdue are in the midst of tight election runoff races in Georgia, where they will face off against their respective Democratic opponents, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, on Tuesday – a day before the certification vote.
Perdue’s first term ended Sunday. The results of the runoff won’t be certified in time for the vote on Wednesday, therefore Perdue won’t have a vote. However, Loeffler, because she is filling a seat vacated by the retirement of Sen. Jonny Isakson, will remain in office until the results of the runoff are certified by the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger.
Raffensperger, a Republican, has overseen three different recounts of the November vote in the state and conducted several other reviews of the process. He recently tasked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation with conducting an audit of the signature match system in Cobb County, which determined the system was 99.9% accurate and revealed no evidence of fraud.
According to an audio recording of a phone call obtained by The Washington Post, President Donald Trump pushed Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn the election results after his loss to Biden.
Perdue not only said he would encourage his colleagues to object to Trump’s loss but also claimed that he himself should have won in November, despite not reaching the 50% threshold required to avoid a runoff.
Until now, Loeffler and Perdue had evaded the question of whether they would accept the presidential election results. Both are staunch supporters of Trump and neither has acknowledged Biden as the President-elect.
Before coming out with her statement, Loeffler had left open the possibility that she might object to the Electoral College results. On December 20, CNN asked Loeffler what her plans were for this week’s vote and she said, “Everything’s on the table right now. This President has fought for us, we’re fighting for him. We need to have free and fair elections. But we also need to make sure Georgians get out and vote on January 5.”