Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who is running for his state’s Senate seat, said he would “absolutely” vote to certify the 2024 presidential election results if he wins the race in November.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Dana Bash noted that if Hogan wins, one of his first votes in the upper chamber will be to certify the election results from each state—a process that is typically ceremonial and comes in January after a presidential election year.
Bash asked Hogan whether he thinks all Democrats and Republicans should vote to certify the results no matter what.
“I think all the conspiracy theories about the stolen election are, are nonsense,” the moderate Republican responded, referring to the 2020 election.
“I mean, certainly, there were certain some irregularities, but not enough to overturn an election,” he continued.
More than two-thirds of House Republicans and eight of 51 Republican senators voted for at least one objection to the electoral vote count in 2020.
A handful of Democrats have used the process, too, to raise concerns about elections, in elections since 2000. Only in 2005 did an objection get a vote, when former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) backed the effort. She said at the time that her goal was “to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now,” rather than overturn the election results.
Hogan, referring to the Republicans who voted against certifying the election results in 2020, said he thought “it was a lack of courage on the part of some folks who, you know, got pressured into taking positions I would never take.”
“And I was the first one, the first Republican, to congratulate President Biden and ask Donald Trump to concede,” Hogan continued. “I mean, obviously we can’t. We can’t try to overturn the will of the voters.”
Bash pressed again whether that meant he would vote to certify “no matter what.”
“Absolutely,” Hogan responded.
