If Trump loses again, Vance won’t have a chance to try that strategy this time. No matter who wins, Vice President Harris will preside over the electoral count in Congress in January. And after Trump pressured Pence to interfere in the 2020 election results, culminating in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Congress passed a law in 2022 making clear that the vice president has very limited power over the electoral process.
But Vance has been a vocal supporter of the former president’s election-denying rhetoric — that the 2020 election was stolen, that the Jan. 6 rioters were wrongfully prosecuted and that Trump’s criminal charges are a form of election interference — and has positioned himself as an administration partner aligned with some of Trump’s most anti-democratic actions. And the example of the Jan. 6 riot shows why that is so dangerous, scholars say.
“If Vance had acted as he promised, we would have had a lot of chaos for a long time and it would have been terrible for the country,” said Edward Foley, who directs the election law program at Ohio State University. “He either doesn’t understand the Constitution or he’s willfully defying it.”
Vance, a freshman senator and one-time Trump critic, has emerged in recent years as one of the former president’s most vocal and ardent supporters, particularly when it comes to election denial. Since the beginning of 2021, he has made more than 10 social media comments casting doubt on the 2020 vote or advocating interference in the 2024 election, according to a Washington Post analysis of his statements and posts across multiple platforms. A spokesman for Vance did not respond to a request for comment.
Like Trump, Vance has not ruled out the possibility of challenging the results of this year’s election, saying he would accept them if they were “free and fair.” He has echoed Trump’s attacks on the integrity of U.S. elections, repeatedly saying he would eliminate early voting and arguing that allowing voters to mail in absentee ballots or vote in person at elections offices “creates a significant opportunity for fraud.” Vance has voted in person several times before Election Day over the past few years, including in the 2020 general election, according to election records.
“We should have an election day again in this country,” he posted on X two weeks ago.
A key litmus test appeared to be Pence’s adherence to Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged, after he resisted intense pressure from Trump’s MAGA movement to block the certification of Biden’s win.
“surely, [Trump’s] “The vice president’s mind is to emulate his views on Jan. 6 and election denialism,” said Joel Goldstein, a professor of law at St. Louis University and an expert on the vice presidency.
Vance has insisted he would be aligned with Trump’s plans to stay in power, setting him apart from other candidates on Trump’s running mate list. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) voted to certify Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R-North Dakota) has declined to comment on Trump’s pressure on Pence to block Biden’s win.
Vance, by contrast, has openly said he would have contributed to efforts to use Trump’s electors to overturn the election results, a move that is now the subject of prosecutions in several states.
“If I were vice president, I would have told Pennsylvania, Georgia and many other states that they needed to have multiple electoral votes, and I think Congress should have taken the debate from there,” Vance told ABC News.
“Do I think Joe Biden would still be president? Well, probably,” Vance said in a New York Times article last month, “but there would at least be a debate.”
Experts said Vance’s position would have been unconstitutional, making clear the Yale-trained lawyer was willing to test legal limits to suit the former president.
“There was absolutely no legal basis or evidence to do so, and so J.D. Vance has already declared that Donald Trump is more important to him than the Constitution and the oath he took as vice president,” said lawyer Norm Eisen, who counseled House Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment trial. “This should be a shock to anyone who cares about American democracy.”
Shortly before Pence was to preside over the certification of the vote in Congress on January 6, 2021, Trump repeatedly pressed him to deny Biden’s victory, even though the vice president has no such power under the Constitution. Republican electors had signed certifications asserting that Trump had won in seven states that Biden had won. Some of Trump’s advisers argued that Pence could approve the slates of those opponents or ask state legislatures to do so.
After rioters broke into the Capitol – some chanting “Hang Mike Pence” – the vice president was hurriedly escorted from the Senate chamber by Secret Service agents and taken to a secure location with his family.
Vance criticized the congressional investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol as a “real attack on democracy” and urged Republicans to “fight fire with fire.” He also called defendants charged in connection with the attack “political prisoners” and mocked Pence for exaggerating the threat to lives that day.
“I simply cannot imagine that Mike Pence’s life was in danger,” Vance told CNN in a May interview. “In politics, sometimes people like to overstate things.”
Tom Josselyn, lead author of the House Jan. 6 committee report, said it’s important to note that Pence will not endorse Trump for president this time around.
“While Pence made it clear he chose the Constitution, Vance said he effectively chose Trump,” Joslin said. “And now Trump has rewarded Vance for his subservience.”
Vance has also promoted the Republican argument that immigrants entering the US illegally boost the Democratic vote, even though it is illegal for foreigners to vote and such instances are extremely rare.
In the spring, after it became clear that Vance was a finalist for the vice presidential nomination, he appeared outside a New York City courthouse during Trump’s criminal trial, repeatedly claiming that the case against Trump was politically motivated and a “threat to American democracy.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we should not be a country where we prosecute political opponents instead of persuading voters,” he said.
David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party who now focuses on Democratic activism, called Vance Trump’s “responsive senator” and said he would say and do anything to protect the former president.
“In his relationship with Trump, loyalty takes precedence over democracy, the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power,” Pepper said, “and Trump makes no secret of that.”
