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

Now, as Trump seeks to return to the White House, only a third of California’s Republican U.S. representatives have pledged to certify the results in November.

Only four of the 12 incumbent heads of government – ​​all of whom are seeking a new term – have pledged to uphold the election results. Of the three GOP challengers in California’s most competitive districts, two — Scott Baugh in Orange County and Kevin Lincoln of the Central Valley — made the same pledge in response to a request from CalMatters. And in California’s U.S. Senate race, GOP candidate Steve Garvey made the commitment February.

The refusal of most GOP congressional candidates to commit comes as Trump and his allies already cast doubt on the outcome of the November election, raising fears among election officials of disturbances and violence. Trump has conveyed unsubstantiated claims of widespread voting by non-citizensargued that Vice President Kamala Harris will only win if the Democrats cheat and questioned the constitutionality of Democrats replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.

Congressional vote to count all electoral votes already certified by each state is the final step in electing a president. Usually 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 to object to the counting of Electoral College votes from either Arizona or Pennsylvania, or both.

All 44 California Democrats in the US House and Senate then voted to approve the election.

Eight of California’s current Republican members of Congress were in office, but only Rep. Young Kim – as flipped its northern Orange County location in 2020 — voted to confirm the result without doubting the election result. “The Constitution does not give Congress the power to overturn elections. To take such action would undermine the authority of the states,” she said a statement year 2021.

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

Rope. Tom McClintock was the only other California Republican to vote to confirm the election. But he said it was because he believed that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to reject the electoral votes—not because he was not concerned about how the election was conducted.

However, in December 2020, McClintock was one of four California Republicans in Congress who filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court to challenge the election results in Pennsylvaniaarguing that postal voting “invites fraud and incubates suspicion of fraud” and claims that “ballots” collected ballots with “no chain of custody”. Several fact checks found no evidence that there was widespread ballot or voter fraud in the 2020 election, and courts rejected more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies to challenge the election results.

McClintock told CalMatters he will vote to uphold the electoral votes for the upcoming election. “Congress’s only role in the matter is to witness the counting of the ballots. Period,” he said.

Young Kim, then a Republican candidate for Congress, during a candidate forum at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, in 2018.

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Bill Clark

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CQ Roll Call via AP Images

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In 2022, Congress passed The Act on reform of the electoral rollwhich made it more difficult for Congress to challenge the election results and clarified the vote-counting process. All Republican representatives from California in office at the time voted against it.

But even with the new guardrail, political experts say efforts to overturn the election are to be expected for now. That’s a stark departure from a decade ago, said Kim Nalder, a professor of political science at California State University in Sacramento.

“It’s really scary that we’ve normalized this abnormal kind of situation,” she said. “We cannot 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 Micheli said the presidential election results could be challenged again, in part because of how close polls say the race is in seven battleground states. Both Harris and Trump are preparing legal teams in the event of a challenge.

“It’s definitely a dark period of American history, both what happened on Jan. 6, but also earlier like before December, when members of Congress voted against certifying the election of the clear winner of the presidential election,” Micheli said. “These votes angered many voters, especially in California.”

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

“To make sure we didn’t leave anything to chance,” she said, the national and state GOP “has invested heavily in a Election Integrity Operation to ensure that all issues are addressed in real time and that Californians can vote with confidence that it will be received and counted.”

The state Republican Party is firmly behind Trumpwho — despite losing to Biden 63% to 34% in 2020 — still won more votes in California than any other state. In one new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California released Wednesday night, Harris leads Trump 59% to 33% among likely voters. But in swing congressional districts, voters are likely to be generally evenly split.

Rope. Ken Calvert, representing 41st District in Riverside Countyis the only California Republican member of Congress who has committed to certifying the presidential election results this time after protesting four years ago. He also joined in court report challenged Pennsylvania’s 2020 results and advocated a “thorough investigation” of allegations of voter fraud year 2021.

Calvert’s campaign did not say why his position has changed from four years ago.

Rope. Jay Obernolte, who voted to oppose the bill, told the Southern California News Group 2022 that he still had “serious constitutional reservations about the things that happened in these two states” – Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Rep. David Valadao and Michelle Steel missed the ballot in 2021. Steel said she had tested positive for covid-19while Valadao had not been sworn in yet because he also tested positive. But Valadao said on social media he would have voted to confirm the election.

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

Reps. Kevin Kiley, Vince Fong, Doug LaMalfa, Darrell Issa and Mike Garcia, as well as Obernolte and Valadao, also did not respond to CalMatters’ requests. Matt Gunderson, a candidate for the 49th District in San Diego County, did not respond to CalMatters.

Note: Some candidates did not respond to the survey so a public statement

was used. An empty space means that none of them were available.

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Jeremiah Kimelman, Yue Stella Yu and Jenna Peterson,

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CalMatters

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Republicans are reluctant to speak publicly on the issue because they are worried about losing votes from Trump supporters, strategists say.

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

“Obviously they’re going to vote to certify the election results, but they don’t really want to fire up the conservative grassroots side either, because they need them for their Get Out the Vote. So this is a divisive issue for Republicans, and so I think not that they want to talk about it much.”

For Republicans running in swing districts, the answer to whether they will uphold the electoral record depends on which voters they want to woo, Nalder said.

“Coming out strongly in support of certification would make sense if the goal was to recruit some moderate voters or some voters from the other party in these tight races,” she said. “But if the strategy is more about turnout among their base … it probably makes sense to be ambiguous.”

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