A majority of California Republicans in Congress will not commit to certifying the 2024 presidential election.

Yue Stella Yu and Jenna Peterson, CalMatters

In January 2021, seven of 11 California Republicans in Congress refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, fueling former President Donald Trump’s false claim that he lost due to a fraudulent vote.

Now, as Trump tries to return to the White House, only a third of the California Republican Party has pledged to certify the election results this November.

Only four of the 12 incumbent Republicans, all running for reelection, have pledged to support the election results. Of the three GOP challengers in California’s most competitive districts, two — Scott Baugh in Orange County and Kevin Lincoln in the Central Valley — made the same promise when asked by CalMatters. And in California’s U.S. Senate race, GOP candidate Steve Garvey made such a commitment in February.

The reversals from most GOP congressional candidates come as Trump and his allies are already casting doubt on the outcome of the November election, raising fears among election officials of disruption and violence. Trump has made unsubstantiated claims about widespread noncitizen voting, said Vice President Kamala Harris will win only if Democrats cheat and questioned the constitutionality of Democrats replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.

Congress’s vote to count all the electoral votes that have already been certified by each state is the final step in electing the president. Normally a formality, it was anything but after Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden.

On January 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. Early the next morning, 147 Republican members of Congress voted against counting the Electoral College votes from Arizona or Pennsylvania, or both.

All 44 California Democrats in the US House and Senate at that time voted to certify the election.

Eight current California GOP members of Congress were in office, but only Rep. Young Kim, who flipped her seat from northern Orange County in 2020, voted to certify the results without questioning the outcome of the election. “The Constitution does not give Congress the power to overturn an election. Such actions will undermine the authority of the states,” she said in a 2021 statement.

She told CalMatters she plans to support the results of this election as well.

Rep. Tom McClintock was the only California Republican to vote to certify the election. But he said that was because he believed Congress did not have the constitutional power to reject electoral votes, not because he was unconcerned with how the election was conducted.

However, in December 2020, McClintock was one of four California Republicans in Congress who filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge the election results in Pennsylvania, arguing that mail-in voting “incites fraud and raises suspicions of fraud” and arguing, that “ballot harvesters” were collecting ballots “without a chain of custody.” Numerous fact checks have found no evidence that there was widespread ballot fraud or voter fraud during the 2020 election, and courts have rejected more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies to challenge the election results.

McClintock told CalMatters he will vote to support the electoral votes in the upcoming election. The only role of “Congress” in this matter is to oversee the counting of ballots. Period,” he said.

In 2022, Congress passed the Vote Count Reform Act, which made it more difficult for Congress to object to election results and clarified the vote-counting process. All California Republican officials in office at the time voted against it.

But even with this new fence, political experts say attempts to overturn the election results should be expected now. That’s a stark change from a decade ago, says Kim Nalder, a political science professor at California State University, Sacramento.

“It’s truly appalling that we have normalized such an abnormal situation,” she said. “We can’t survive with this level of distrust in our basic institutions, and I don’t know what will change that, but something has to.”

Veteran lobbyist Chris Miceli said the presidential election results could be contested again, in part because of how close polls show the elections in seven battleground states. Both Harris and Trump are preparing legal teams in case problems arise.

“This is definitely a dark period in American history, both what happened on January 6th and earlier last December when members of Congress voted against certifying the clear winner of the presidential election,” Micheli said. “These votes have angered many voters, especially in California.”

The California Republican Party is confident the election results will be certified, spokeswoman Ellie Hockenbury said in a statement to CalMatters. However, the party is preparing for the problems that may arise.

“To make sure we leave nothing to chance,” she said, the national and state Republican Party “has invested heavily in the election integrity operation to ensure that all issues are resolved in real time and that Californians can vote with confidence.” that it will be received and counted.”

The state’s Republican Party remains firmly behind Trump, who despite losing to Biden 63% to 34% in 2020 still won more votes in California than in any other state. In a new Public Policy Institute of California poll released Wednesday evening, Harris leads Trump 59% to 33% among likely voters. But in swing districts, likely voters are usually evenly split.

Rep. Ken Calvert, who represents Riverside County’s 41st District, is the only California GOP member of Congress who has committed to certifying the presidential election results this time after objections four years ago. He also participated in a lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania’s 2020 results and advocated for a “thorough investigation” of allegations of voter fraud in 2021.

Calvert’s campaign did not explain why his position had changed from four years earlier.

Rep. Jay Obernolte, who voted against the count, told the Southern California News Group in 2022 that he still had “serious constitutional reservations about what happened in these two states” — Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Reps. David Valadao and Michelle Steel skipped the 2021 vote. Steele said she tested positive for COVID-19, while Valadao had not yet been sworn in because he also tested positive. However, Valadao said on social media that he would vote to certify the election.

The three incumbents taking office in 2023 will face this decision for the first time if they win re-election. But not everyone is answering that question: Rep. John Duarte—a Modesto farmer facing a brutal challenge from Democrat Adam Gray—is the only one to publicly state his position, telling the Sacramento Bee that he will vote to certify the presidential election. (Duarte did not respond to CalMatters’ request.)

Representatives Kevin Kiely, Vince Fong, Doug LaMalfa, Darrell Issa and Mike Garcia, as well as Obernolte and Valadao also did not respond to CalMatters’ inquiries. Matt Gunderson, the toss-up candidate for San Diego County’s 49th District, did not respond to CalMatters.

Republicans are reluctant to talk publicly about the issue because they are concerned about losing votes from Trump supporters, strategists say.

“This puts Republicans in competitive districts in a difficult position,” said John Fleischman, former executive director of the California Republican Party.

“Of course they’re going to vote to certify the election results, but they don’t really want to irritate the conservative grassroots either because they need them to get them out to the polls. So this is a divisive issue among Republicans, and so I don’t think they want to talk about it much.”

For Republicans running in swing districts, Nalder said, the answer to whether they will support the election results depends on which voters they want to reach.

“Coming strongly in favor of certification would make sense if the goal was to attract some moderate voters or some voters from the other party in these close races,” she said. “But if the strategy is more focused on turnout among their electorate… it probably makes sense to shy away.”

For GOP members of Congress in safe Republican districts, however, the calculation is more about their “future in the party,” Nalder said.

“Assuming Trump wins, they’ll need to demonstrate loyalty within the party, and so committing early to something that the party might later oppose won’t help their political careers,” she said.