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How NC Delegation Voted In Biden Victory Certification

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., speaks in the House Chamber after they reconvened for arguments over the objection of certifying Arizona’s Electoral College votes in November’s election, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (Amanda Voisard/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)

Most of North Carolina's Republican Congressional delegation voted with a breakoff group of GOP colleagues in the Biden victory certification. They made a controversial and failed bid to oppose the certification of votes giving Biden the presidency. Here's a breakdown of how they voted.

There are 13 Congressional districts in North Carolina, and Republicans hold eight of those seats. Patrick McHenry, whose 10th District includes the western Piedmont including parts of Forsyth County, was the only one of the state's representatives not to object to either of the two votes that were contested.

Among the Republicans voting against certification was Dan Bishop. He's in Congress via a special election after evidence was uncovered of ballot harvesting by a Republican operative in 2018.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, who represents the High Country, split her two votes, agreeing to the objections in Pennsylvania but not Arizona.

Fellow Republican Ted Budd was among the first in North Carolina to announce his decision to oppose certification, going public before Christmas. He opposed both.

Opponents of the certification argued that there's public mistrust of the results of the election amid allegations of fraud and irregularities. Those have been largely debunked or failed in court.

Prior to this cycle, certification was seen as largely ceremonial. Congress does not have the authority to overturn an election by not certfying the result.

The state's two Republican Senators — Thom Tillis and Richard Burr — sided with the bipartisan majority to certify the vote.

The tally was just underway when a mob of pro-Trump extremists broke into the Capitol Building following an incendiary speech by the president.  

Congress ultimately certified the results, confirming Joe Biden's victory in the November election. He's scheduled to be sworn in in less than two weeks.

 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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