In January 2021, seven of California’s 11 Republicans in Congress refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, adding to former President Donald Trump’s false claim that he lost in a fraudulent vote.

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

Only four of the 12 GOP incumbents — all of whom are seeking another term — have vowed to uphold the election results. Of the three GOP contenders in California’s most competitive districts, two — Scott Baugh of Orange County and Kevin Lincoln of the Central Valley — made the same pledge in response to a CalMatters inquiry. And in California’s US Senate race, GOP candidate Steve Garvey has pledged February.

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

Congress’s vote to count all the electoral votes that are 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 crowd of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. Early the next morning, 147 Republican members of Congress voted to object to the counting of votes by the Electoral College of either Arizona or Pennsylvania or both.

All 44 California Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate at the time voted to certify the election.

Eight of California’s current Republican members of Congress were in office, but only Rep. Young Kim — who changed venue from northern Orange County in 2020 — voted to certify the results without questioning the outcome of the election. “The Constitution does not give Congress the authority to nullify elections. Taking such measures would undermine the authority of states,” she said in a statement in 2021.

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

Rep. Tom McClintock was the only California Republican to vote to certify the election. But he said it was because he believed that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to reject electoral votes—not because he had no concerns 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 challenging the results of the Pennsylvania electionclaiming that voting by mail “invites fraud and incubates the suspicion of fraud” and claiming that “ballot harvesters” collected ballots with “no chain of custody.” Multiple fact checks finder no evidence that there was widespread ballot harvesting or voter fraud during the 2020 election, and courts have dismissed more than 50 lawsuits that Trump and his allies brought to challenge the election results.

McClintock told CalMatters he will vote to support electoral votes for the upcoming election. “The only role of Congress in this matter is to assist in the counting of the ballots. Period,” he said.

The younger 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 law on the reform of the electoral numberwhich made it more difficult for Congress to object to election results and clarified the vote-counting process. All of the California Republican incumbents who were in office at the time voted against it.

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

“It’s really appalling that we’ve normalized this kind of abnormal situation,” she said. “We cannot survive with this level of distrust in our core institutions and I don’t know what it will take to change that, but something has to be done.”

Veteran lobbyist Chris Micheli said the results of the presidential election 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 certainly a dark time in American history, both what happened on Jan. 6 and also earlier the previous December when members of Congress voted against certifying the election of the clear winner in the presidential election,” Micheli said. “Those votes angered many voters, especially in California.”

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

“To make sure we didn’t leave anything to chance,” she said, the national and state GOP “have invested heavily in a Electoral integrity operation to ensure that all concerns 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. One new survey by the Public Policy Institute of California released late Wednesday, Harris leads Trump 59 percent to 33 percent among likely voters. But in swing congressional districts, likely voters are generally evenly split.

Rep. Ken Calvert, who represents Riverside County District 41is the only Republican member of Congress from California to commit to certifying the results of the presidential election this time after objections four years ago. Also joined at summary of the court challenged Pennsylvania’s results in 2020 and called for a “thorough investigation” of allegations of voter fraud in 2021.

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

Rep. Jay Obernolte, who voted in favor of the count, Southern California News Group said in 2022, that he still had “serious constitutional reservations about the things that happened in those two states” – Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Reps. David Valadao and Michelle Steel missed the ballot in 2021. Steel said she has tested positive for COVID-19while Valadao the oath had not yet been taken because he also tested positive. However, Valadao said on social networks would be voted to certify the election.

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

Reps. Kevin Kiley, Vince Fong, Doug LaMalfa, Darrell Issa and Mike Garcia, as well as Obernolte and Valadao, also did not respond to questions from CalMatters. 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. A blank space means none were available.

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Jeremia Kimelman, Yue Stella Yu and Jenna Peterson,

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CalMatters

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Republicans are reluctant to talk publicly about the issue because they worry about losing votes to 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.

“Of course they’re going to vote to certify the election results, but they don’t really want to fire up the conservative grassroots either, because they need them to get out the vote. So this is a divisive issue for Republicans, and so I don’t think they want to talk about it too much.”

For Republicans running in swing districts, the answer to whether they will support the outcome of the election depends on which voters they want to court, Nalder said.

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

However, for GOP members of Congress in safe Republican districts, the calculus is more about “their future in the party,” Nalder said.