Amy Klobuchar laughs off Ted Cruz's attempt to rehash the 2020 election

03 August 2022

United States Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) complained at a Senate Rules Committee hearing on Wednesday that Congress should have formed a special commission to determine the outcome of the 2020 election.

His remarks, which reiterated former President Donald Trump's false narrative that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the presidency, came during a discussion over how to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

"I continue to believe it would’ve been a better approach for Congress in the 2020 election to have followed the precedent from 1876 and to have appointed an Election Commission. There are a large percentage of Americans who still have deep doubts about the veracity of the election," Cruz said. "And I think it would have behooved both parties to have a serious, substantive examination on the merits of the facts of those claims. Congress didn't go down that role and one of the consequences of that now is we continue to have deep divisions in this country."

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), who chairs the Rules Committee, was unamused.

"Okay, thank you, Senator Cruz," she replied. "I am not a big fan of the 1876 election. I wouldn't have been able to vote, for one thing."

Cruz, who was one of 16 Republicans to reject Biden's victory, interjected with, "well sure, you weren't alive then."

"That's true but I'm just trying to put it in, you know..." Klobuchar said.

Women were granted suffrage in 1920.

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The 1876 presidential election was one of the closest in United States history. Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican governor of Ohio, had squared off against Democrat Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York, who won the popular vote. The contest resulted in neither man receiving a majority in the Electoral College.

"Three states were in doubt: Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, with 19 electoral votes among them. The status of one of Oregon’s three electors—that had already been given to Tilden—was also in question. Hayes and most of his associates were ready to concede when a New Hampshire Republican leader, William E. Chandler, observed that if Hayes were awarded every one of the doubtful votes, he would defeat Tilden 185–184. Both parties claimed victory in all three Southern states and sent teams of observers and lawyers into all three in hopes of influencing the official canvass," according to Britannica.

Per the Constitution, the race went to the House of Representatives, where each state's delegation gets to pick a candidate and then "send its electoral certificate to the president of the Senate, who 'shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted,'" Britannica explains. "But it shed no light on whether Congress might, in a disputed election, go behind a state’s certificate and review the acts of its certifying officials or even if it might examine the choice of electors."

When Congress was scheduled to convene on December 6th, 1876, rivalries erupted amongst lawmakers, and an Electoral Commission was formed on January 29th, 1877. It was granted “'the same powers, if any,' possessed by Congress in the matter, and its decisions were to be final unless rejected by both houses," Britannica notes.

Things turned messy in – of all places – Florida, where Tilden is believed to have technically won. But its electors were awarded to Hayes amid partisan political pressure. He was inaugurated as the 19th president on March 2nd, 1877.

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