Republican Senate campaign chairman says GOP ready for legal challenges if concerned about voter fraud

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The senator in charge of the party’s arm to elect Republicans to the upper chamber said that the GOP is prepared to challenge election results where they think there is voter fraud, as the party has sought to delegitimise electoral results they disagree with despite little actual evidence of fraud.

Sen Rick Scott, who serves as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told The Independent in an interview that will be published in full next week that the NRSC, along with the Republican National Committee, is part of litigation to defend voter laws in Florida, Georgia, Texas and Iowa.

“And I think we're figuring out if we can do something in North Carolina to defend their election laws,” Mr Scott told The Independent.

Mr Scott pointed to his own campaign for Senate in 2018 when he beat incumbent Democratic Sen Bill Nelson by 10,003 votes and triggered a hand recount and lawsuits from both campaigns. Then-president Donald Trump alleged voter fraud in the race and Mr Scott, who at the time was the governor of the Sunshine State, accused Democrats of trying to “steal” the election.

“And if we hadn't, we'd had a very difficult time winning because I won by 54,000 or 57,000 votes election night, and then they illegally found ballot afterwards,” he said, in reference to ballots being found after the election.

Despite Republicans’ efforts to restrict access to the ballot box in the name of combating “fraud”, documented cases of voting misconduct are rare.

Mr Scott also touted that he is one of the few Republicans who has beaten Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias, who has seldom lost recount cases. Similarly, Mr Scott rejected a congressional objection to Arizona’s election results on 6 January but voted in favour of an objection to President Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, breaking with his fellow Florida Republican Sen Marco Rubio. He said in February that Mr Biden won “fair and square”, something the former president has not conceded.

The Independent will publish its full profile of Sen Scott next week.