Leaders Call for Calm Ahead of Potentially Fraught Election Outcome

Less than a month out from Election Day, there are concerns on both sides of the aisle about the aftermath of what could be one of the closest races in modern history, with some lawmakers warning of a potential repeat of events following the 2020 election.

Four years ago, then-President Donald Trump contested the fact that he lost to Joe Biden. His allies launched widespread legal challenges and there were attempts to overturn Biden’s victory, which culminated in a Trump-supporting mob marching on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to disrupt the certification of Electoral College votes.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told Newsweek, “If Vice President Kamala Harris wins, we cannot allow Donald Trump to continue the Big Lie—like he did in 2020—and refuse to accept the election results. As a nation, we can only move forward if there is a peaceful transition of power.”

Last week, at a White House press briefing, Biden said that he was confident the election would be “free and fair,” but said “I don’t know whether it will be peaceful. The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.”

These worries aren’t unfounded; Trump has claimed as recently as last week that he, “won,” the 2020 election.

Trump rebuked Biden’s White House remarks in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Saturday, suggesting that the president didn’t know what what he was talking about.

A spokesperson for Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

As the countdown to November 5 continues, last minute election changes in key swing states like Georgia and North Carolina have seen experts raising the alarm over vote counting delays and uncertainty in battleground states.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar told Newsweek that “Election officials from both parties have made clear that there are protections in law if local officials try to delay or stop the certification of election results, including by going to court to compel certification if necessary.”

“That’s why efforts to block the certification of election results that we saw in 2022 and 2020 were ultimately unsuccessful, and I am confident that dedicated state and local election officials across the country will continue to do their jobs administering our free and fair elections,” the Minnesota Democrat said.

While there were attempts to block election certification in both 2020 and 2022, these were unsuccessful due to courts rejecting legal challenges, and officials in key states refusing to overturn results that had been certified.

Klobuchar highlighted that in her role as Chair of the Senate Rules Committee, she passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, which “includes provisions to ensure that candidates can go to federal court to stop a rogue governor from sending invalid electoral votes to Congress or refusing to certify the correct slate of electors.”

“The cornerstone of our democracy is the peaceful transfer of power,” Klobuchar said.

Durbin echoed this sentiment. “A fundamental pillar of our democracy is the right to vote,” the Illinois Democrat said. “And, in a few weeks, millions of Americans around the country will have the ability to cast a vote for the candidate they believe will best lead our nation.”

Klobuchar said, “More Americans than ever have cast a ballot in recent elections, and it is largely because of the work of state and local officials that these elections have run smoothly. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have confirmed the security of recent elections.”

When contacted for comment on this article, a representative for Sen. Marco Rubio directed Newsweek to the Florida Republican’s appearance on Face The Nation, in which he said illegal election interference is “going to become a fact of life in the 21^st century. It’s just very easy now for anyone to do it. You don’t have to be a big nation state.”

“There are multiple actors out there that are in this space now, and I think you’ll see more in the years to come, because you don’t need to build anything really expensive. You just need access to the World Wide Web.

“We’re an open country, an open society with open means of communication, and the best way to deal with all this is awareness. People need to understand that not everything you see on the internet is true,” Rubio said in the interview.

In addition to late changes to election rules, reports of non-citizen voting has heightened election concerns. In August, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that 6,500 alleged non-citizens had been removed from the Lone Star State’s voter rolls, and a similar report from Virginia said that Gov. Glenn Youngkin had signed an executive order cementing election security protocols and removing 6,000 alleged noncitizens from the voting rolls.

A lawsuit has now been filed against Youngkin for the removal, accusing him of engaging in an illegal “voter purge.”

Speaking about the issue, Klobuchar told Newsweek that non-citizen voting is, “already a federal crime,” and described it as “rare.”

“We have also made critical investments in our election infrastructure in recent years and Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Jen Easterly has noted that 97 percent of voters will cast their vote with back-up paper ballots in this year’s election,” she said.

Klobuchar also emphasized changes that have been made to the Electoral Count Act, which had “broad bipartisan support.”

“I shepherded those reforms through the Senate with Senators Collins, Manchin, and Blunt to make sure the electoral votes for president accurately reflect the election results in each state and to prevent partisan officials from overturning the will of the voters,” she said.

Susan Collins of Maine and Roy Blunt of Missouri and both Republicans. Joe Manchin is a Democratic senator from West Virginia.

“With significant numbers of Americans choosing to vote by mail, it can take time to count ballots in different states, but election officials have proven that they will do their job and there are protections in law to ensure that election results are certified in a timely way,” Klobuchar said.

Durbin said, “When the American people speak, we, as lawmakers, must listen. As a United States Senator, I will perform my duty and certify the election results for the candidate the voters choose.”

In 2020, most Senate Republicans rejected the false claims of voter fraud and joined their Democratic colleagues in certifying the results from all the states, but anti-Trump Utah Sen. Mitt Romney told the The Hill that he wasn’t sure if his colleagues would do the same this time round.

“I don’t know,” he told the Washington, D.C. newspaper. “Big question.”

Do you have a story Newsweek should be covering? Do you have any questions about this story? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com.