Where JD Vance stands on certifying the 2020 election and voter fraud

Donald Trump's new running mate, Sen. JD Vance, wasn't yet a member of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, when an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, chanting "hang Mike Pence" and seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

But that hasn't stopped Vance, R-Ohio, from promoting Trump's unfounded claims about that election, won by President Joe Biden, and insisting lawmakers could have fought the results.

“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,” Vance said in an interview with ABC News this year. “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.”

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the UCLA School of Law, said it's the states that are empowered to contest their results and proffer slates of electors — not the vice president.

"There were single slates of electors that were submitted from each state, and there was no reasonable basis to challenge the legitimacy of those slates of electors," he said.

In interviews, Vance has repeatedly argued there were problems with the 2020 election, pointing to pandemic-related election rule changes like mail voting expansions, which Republicans protested and didn't seek to rally their voters around, and a social media company’s decision to block a story about Hunter Biden, the president's son, weeks ahead of the election.

“Whether you think Hunter Biden is as major an issue as I do or disagree, in American democracy you let the voters decide. That was a way in which