Former vice-president Mike Pence has broken his silence about the deadly Jan 6th insurrection in which supporters of Donald Trump’s stormed the U.S. Capitol. Pence brought up concerns of “election integrity” even though Republicans in the Senate blocked Democrats’ efforts to pass three election security-related bills in 2020 unanimously. So, it’s remarkable that Republicans are suddenly feigning concern for our elections’ security just after Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in both the electoral and popular vote. They didn’t care about the security of our elections before that.
Pence penned an op-ed published Wednesday by The Daily Signal, and it appears that the former vice-president is justifying the MAGA rioters’ concerns, and he also appears to be giving Trump’s big lie more juice.
“After an election marked by significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of the 2020 election,” Pence wrote.
“The tragic events of Jan. 6 — the most significant being the loss of life and violence at our nation’s Capitol — also deprived the American people of a substantive discussion in Congress about election integrity in America,” he continued.
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“Many of the most troubling voting irregularities took place in states that set aside laws enacted by state legislatures in favor of sweeping changes ordered by governors, secretaries of state, and courts,” Pence wrote as he once again bent over and grabbed his ankles for the former president.
Pence targeted the proposed For the People Act that he claims would invite fraud by requiring universal mail-in ballots and other measures that are aimed at increasing access to voting. Republicans are afraid of Americans going to the polls to vote, so they have been trying to make it more difficult to vote.
“We have to do everything we can to change that and ensure that the American people, no matter which political party they favor, have confidence in the fairness and security of the election process,” Pence insisted.
“HR 1 mandates the most questionable and abuse-prone election rules nationwide, while banning commonsense measures to detect, deter, and prosecute election fraud,” he added.
Pence also tweeted this:
HR 1, the so-called For the People Act, will increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment, further erode confidence in our elections and should be rejected by every member of Congress and opposed by every patriotic American.
— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) March 3, 2021
Election fraud and voter fraud are rare but do go off, Mike. It’s as if he’s claiming that his former boss’s supporters — even though they were trying to kill him — were justified in storming the Capitol just after they erected a gallows outside. Trump didn’t lose the election due to voter fraud. He lost because the twice-impeached former president is and was deeply unpopular, and he completely bungled his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
