Fact-checking Kamala Harris’ claim that J.D. Vance said he would have overturned the 2020 election

Vice President Kamala Harris said in a campaign video that former President Donald Trump’s pick for vice president will be "loyal only to Trump, not to our country."

Harris said in the video that the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, will "rubber stamp" Trump’s "extreme agenda." She added, "Unlike Mike Pence, Vance said he would have carried out Trump's plan to overturn the 2020 election."

After losing the 2020 election, Trump and his allies sought to enlist help from state elected officials, Justice Department officials and then-Vice President Mike Pence to stay in office. 

Trump allies put forward their own slates of "alternate" electors to sign certificates declaring that Trump won battleground states that he actually lost. Trump critics have referred to them as "fake electors" and state prosecutors have criminally charged dozens of them. On Jan. 6, 2021, Pence refused to consider Trump’s alternate slates of electors. 

Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss happened before Vance was a senator, so Vance was not in position to vote to accept the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. Vance won the U.S. Senate race in 2022. 

We examined how Vance has addressed this issue in media interviews and found that he hasn’t directly said he would have overturned the election. But comments he’s made that Congress should have considered multiple slates of electors align with plans by Trump and his allies to have an alternate slate of electors vote for Trump. Vance has also said the 2020 election was "stolen" from Trump.

When Congress meets to certify the election results, the vice president opens the envelopes from each state that contain the results that determine which candidate received that state’s electoral votes. These results, presented in official certificates, have been signed and sealed. The vice president opens the envelopes and hands them to four members from the House and Senate who read the results aloud. At the end, the vice president announces the final tally.

Pence has said that Trump asked him to overturn the election by returning or rejecting votes cast for Biden. Pence said he had no authority to do that.

In a February 2024 interview, ABC’s "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos asked Vance how he would have handled the election results if he had been vice president in 2020.

Vance said there should have been multiple slates of electors. In 2022, Congress clarified the Electoral Count Act to say the vice president’s role is strictly "ministerial" and binds Congress to accept a single slate of electors from each state.

Stephanopoulos asked Vance, "Had you been vice president on Jan. 6, would you have certified the election results?"

Vance said he thought there were problems with the 2020 election, including changes in Pennsylvania balloting rules. (In October 2019, Pennsylvania’s General Assembly passed Act 77 to permit no-excuse, mail-in voting.)

"So, litigating which slate of electors were legitimate I think is fundamentally the political solution to the problems that existed in 2020," Vance said.

Stephanopoulos again asked: "Would you have certified the election results had you been vice president?"

Vance said, "If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that's what we should have done."

Stephanopoulos said to Vance, "So, it's very clear, you would have done what Donald Trump asked you to do there, not what Vice President Mike Pence did." 

Vance said, "It’s not about what Donald Trump asks somebody to do. It's about, what do we do when you have a problem like what happened in 2020? How do you respond to it? How does the political system respond to this?"

When Vance ran for U.S. Senate, he told Time magazine in a July 2021 interview that he thought the 2020 election was "unfair." 

"I think Josh Hawley did the right thing," he said.

Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, led the Senate charge against Congress accepting Joe Biden’s victory — a position he kept after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Much of Hawley’s argument was based on changes to Pennsylvania mail-in voting.

Courts, state election officials, including Georgia Republicans, and Trump administration officials said that the 2020 election results were legitimate. By contrast, Vance has claimed that people voted illegally "on a large-scale basis."  

During a Senate primary debate in 2022, Vance said, "I say it all the time: I think the election was stolen from Trump." 

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Weeks before the 2022 midterms, the The Cincinnati Enquirer asked Vance, "Do you believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected in 2020?"

Vance said, "I mean, he's the president, right? He is certainly the legitimate president of the United States. The thing that I've always said here, and I'll repeat to you, is, ‘Was the election in 2020 free and fair, was it above board?’ My answer is no, I really don't think that it was."

In a June 2024 interview with Ross Douthat, a conservative opinion columnist at The New York Times, Vance said there should have been an effort to provide alternate slates of electors "to force us to have that debate." He also said that "challenging elections and questioning the legitimacy of elections" is part of the democratic process.

CNN’s Dana Bash asked Vance on May 12 whether he would commit to accepting the 2024 election results.

"Certainly, if we have a free and fair election, I will accept the results," Vance said. 

Bash asked Vance, "Even if Joe Biden wins?"

Vance said, "Sure. If it's a free and fair election, I will accept the results, Dana, whoever wins."

Harris said, "Unlike Mike Pence, Vance said he would have carried out Trump's plan to overturn the 2020 election."

Vance hasn’t said exactly that. But he has said he supported Trump’s plan to present Congress with alternate slates of electors on Jan. 6, 2021, that showed Trump winning battleground states he actually had lost.

Vance’s statement showed he supported pursuing a path that would have allowed Congress to challenge Biden’s victory.

The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.  We rate it Mostly  True.

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