Pelosi elected to 4th term as House speaker

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, put out a statement saying she will uphold the Electoral College vote on Wednesday when a joint session of Congress meets, imploring other members to join her. 

“I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and that is what I will do January 6—just as I strive to do every day as I serve the people of Alaska," the statement reads. "I will vote to affirm the 2020 presidential election. The courts and state legislatures have all honored their duty to hear legal allegations and have found nothing to warrant overturning the results. I urge my colleagues from both parties to recognize this and to join me in maintaining confidence in the Electoral College and our elections so that we ensure we have the continued trust of the American people.”

Her statement came on the heels of a statement from 11 senators and senators-elect saying they would join Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., in objecting.

Federal law requires the states to deliver certified Electoral College results to the vice president, serving as president of the Senate, and other parties by Dec. 23. Then, on Jan. 6, a joint meeting of Congress is held to certify the electoral votes and officially declare the winner of the presidential election.

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden received 306 votes and Trump received 232 votes from the Electoral College, with 270 votes needed to declare a winner.

-ABC News' Trish Turner

A group of GOP senators has come out with an extraordinary claim about “allegations of voter fraud” and “irregularities” that they say hasn’t been seen “in our lifetimes” -- claiming they will object on Wednesday during a joint session of Congress to count electoral votes "unless and until" a 10-day audit of election returns in disputed states is completed.

The eleven senators and senators-elect plan to object to the certification of electors in some states where votes were disputed, though no list of states was given.

Also, no widespread fraud has been found by any court to date and such claims have been refuted by secretaries of state.

The senators -- Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; James Lankford,  R-Okla; Steve Daines, R-Mont.; John Kennedy, R-La., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Mike Braun, R-Ind., as well as Senators-Elect Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.; Roger Marshall, R-Kan.; Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. -- say they expect their efforts to fail and join Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who also has announced his intention to object.

“The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided.  The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities," the statement says, though none of these allegations has been supported by fact-finding efforts.

This is an extraordinary bucking of GOP leadership, which had hoped to avoid objections. However, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did, according to senators, tell them privately to vote their conscience.

-ABC News' Trish Turner

More than 3 million Georgians have already voted in the Jan. 5 runoff election, a figure that both smashes the previous turnout record for a statewide runoff in the Peach State and exemplifies the urgency of the dual Senate runoffs that will determine which party controls Congress's upper chamber.

According to Georgia Votes, which is analyzing data from the secretary of state's office, 3,001,017 voters had cast ballots in the runoff election following the last day of the three-week advance in-person voting period. Of those votes, 928,069 are absentee by mail and 2,072,948 are from in-person early voting.

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan

A judge has tossed out Rep. Louie Gohmert's effort to overturn the results of the presidential election by forcing Vice President Mike Pence to override the electors when votes are finalized by Congress on Jan 6.

"The problem for Plaintiffs here is that they lack standing," Judge Jeremy Kernodle wrote in rejecting the case against Gohmert and several alternate Arizona electors Friday evening. "Plaintiff Louie Gohmert, the United States Representative for Texas’s First Congressional District, alleges at most an institutional injury to the House of Representatives. Under well settled Supreme Court authority, that is insufficient to support standing." 

He also said that the intervening electors "allege an injury that is not fairly traceable" to the vice president.

Pence had argued that Gohmert should have sued the House and the Senate, not the vice president in his presiding role.

"The other Plaintiffs, the slate of Republican Presidential Electors for the State of Arizona (the “Nominee-Electors”), allege an injury that is not fairly traceable to the Defendant, the Vice President of the United States, and is unlikely to be redressed by the requested relief," Kernodle wrote. 

Kernodle also wrote that Gohmert didn't allege any harm done to himself as an individual. 

"He does not identify any injury to himself as an individual, but rather a 'wholly abstract and widely dispersed' institutional injury to the House of Representatives," the judge wrote.

Following the ruling, Gohmert and the alternate Arizona electors filed a notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

-ABC News' Meg Cunningham