Vice President Mike Pence’s job duties include presiding over the certification of the Electoral College votes in a joint session of Congress scheduled for January 6th, which in normal years is a purely ceremonial task performed every four years. 2020, of course, was no normal year, and no normal election, and on Saturday Pence gave a nod of approval to the efforts by congressional Republicans to object to that certification, issuing a statement through his chief of staff that he “welcomes their efforts.”

The statement by Pence Chief of Staff Mark Short was reported by CNN’s Jim Acosta on Twitter.

“Vice President Pence shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election,” said Short in the statement. “The Vice President welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th.”

Statement from VP Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short:
“Vice President Pence shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election….”

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 2, 2021

Short statement continued: “The Vice President welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th.”

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 2, 2021

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was the first senator to say he would object to the Electoral College vote certification. He was joined by eleven others including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who issued a statement threatening to vote to reject the certification unless certain demands were met regarding investigating claims of voter fraud.

To date, President Donald Trump’s campaign and other allies have filed a variety of lawsuits in multiple states and at the Supreme Court, none of which have offered evidence of voter fraud to a level that could conceivably change the results of the presidential election in any state, much less overturn the results in the multiple states needed to flip President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

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