Madison Cawthorn Vows to Contest Presidential Election Result, Help Primary GOP Holdouts By Mairead McArdle
North Carolina Congressman-elect Madison Cawthorn announced Monday that he plans to contest the presidential election results when Congress meets next month to count the electoral votes and warned other Republicans that he will fund their primary challengers if they do not call for “fair” elections.
“I will be contesting the election,” Cawthorn, a Republican, said Monday during remarks at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“And not only that,” he continued. “I have a message for all other Republicans across the country. If you are not on the record calling for fair, free, and just elections now and in the future, I will come to your district, and I will fund a primary opponent against you.”
Cawthorn, 25, who was elected to represent North Carolina’s 11th congressional district last month, claimed that swing states with “liberal” governors and secretaries of states have “broken the law and gone against our Constitution” in the 2020 election.
“The right to vote in a free and fair election is the cornerstone of our Republic,” Cawthorn wrote Monday in a tweet after his announcement. “Attempts to subvert the Constitutional authority of state legislatures to conduct elections strikes at the very heart of representative government. I choose to stand in the breach, to fight for us.”
“On behalf of the people I am contesting this election based on constitutional violations by key states,” he added in a later tweet.
States certified their Electoral College results earlier this month, with former Vice President Joe Biden winning the election with 306 electoral votes to President Trump’s 232. A congressional joint session will be convened on January 6 before Inauguration Day next month to count the electoral votes.
Cawthorn said his decision to contest the election results based on “substantial allegations of voter fraud” is not political and predicted that the move will “likely harm” rather than help his career in Washington.
A formal challenge would require a senator to join Cawthorn in contesting Biden’s victory.
Since the election, Trump has refused to concede and claimed he won a second term, alleging widespread voter fraud favoring Biden. His legal team has filed a slew of lawsuits in swing states Biden won but has failed to produce evidence of fraud on a scale that would alter the election outcome.
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