Leadership Now Project Urges Congress to Respect Democracy, Certify Electoral College Results

This fall, America’s business community came together on an unprecedented scale to publicly call for patience and civility while all votes were counted. Now, the business community comes together again to call on elected officials to respect the will of our voters and the democratic principles that are the bedrock of our country.

In mid-December, the Electoral College confirmed Joe Biden as President-Elect. Efforts by a group of Senators to overturn the will of the voters, compounded by President Trump’s baseless attempts to delegitimize the election, have led to multiple threats against election officials while further eroding faith in our democratic process and institutions. 

In October, Leadership Now launched a statement on election integrity with prominent business signatories, and in November we urged the GSA to begin the transition process. Ours were the first in a range of business statements, and ultimately we were joined by hundreds of CEOs and associations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Manufacturer’s Association, and the Civic Alliance. Now, once again, we join forces to issue statements alongside the U.S. Chamber, 170 CEOs under the Partnership for NYC, the National Association of Manufacturers and other business leaders to call on elected officials to respect and protect the democratic process. 

We agree with the six Republicans members of the House who explained succinctly in their statement: “As of this moment, not a single state has submitted multiple conflicting slates of electoral votes...To take action otherwise – that is, to unconstitutionally insert Congress into the center of the presidential election process – would amount to stealing power from the people and the states.”

We agree with all living former Secretaries of Defense both Republican and Democrat, who wrote this week: “The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.” 

Ongoing unsubstantiated claims of fraud sow distrust in the system and diminish our ability to achieve the type of bipartisan problem-solving that’s needed to tackle our nation’s toughest challenges, from COVID-19 to economic recovery. It is time to move forward and respect the will of the voters and electors.