Sen. Lisa Blunt RochesterCertified

Election Legitimacy (29/30)

Lisa Blunt Rochester has never disputed a certified election outcome, has won every federal race she has run (U.S. House 2016–2022, U.S. Senate 2024), and has spoken publicly about the legitimacy and fragility of American elections rather than undermining them. Her 2024 Senate win was decisive and uncontested — she defeated Republican Eric Hansen 56.6% to 39.5% and made history as the first woman and first Black person elected to the Senate from Delaware (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Notably, she was physically present in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, for the certification of the 2020 election. Her own campaign biography recounts that she “was trapped in the balcony overlooking the House floor when insurrectionists attacked our Capitol” and that the experience shaped her view of “how fragile our democracy is” (Lisa Blunt Rochester for Senate). Rather than echoing the false fraud claims that fueled that attack, she has consistently framed the day as an attack on a legitimate, certified outcome — the opposite of election denialism. No search turned up any statement from her disputing a legitimate election result without evidence, in 2020, 2024, or any other cycle. The score is not a full 30 only because, as a very safely-elected member from a small, heavily Democratic state, she has not had to navigate a genuinely contested loss of her own, which somewhat limits the “hardest test” evidence available.

Voting Rights (22/25)

Blunt Rochester has a long, substantive record on ballot access. As a House member she was a cosponsor of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4, 117th Congress), formally joining the bill on August 17, 2021 (Congress.gov). She has described personally working alongside the late Rep. John Lewis on voting-rights legislation, recalling that when his bill was pending in the Senate she “joined [House] members and walked across the Capitol…to show our presence” (Democracy Docket). In that same interview she articulated a straightforward ballot-access standard, saying the goal should be that “if you are eligible to vote, we need to make sure that you have access to the ballot” (Democracy Docket).

As senator, she has publicly opposed the SAVE Act, a documentary-proof-of-citizenship voting bill that voting-rights groups argue would disenfranchise eligible voters; she has called it a “contradiction of our democracy” (Essence). This is a consistent, on-the-record pro-ballot-access posture across both chambers. The score falls short of a perfect mark because most of this activity is documented through cosponsorship and public advocacy rather than her authoring landmark standalone voting-rights legislation herself.

Checks and Balances (17/25)

The available record shows Blunt Rochester voting for institutional-integrity measures — a House press release touts that she “Votes to Protect Our Elections, End Big Money in Politics, and Advance Groundbreaking Ethics Reform” (Blunt Rochester House office), indicating support for anti-corruption and ethics-reform legislation, which is directly relevant to checks-and-balances concerns like curbing dark money and improving accountability. Beyond this, however, direct, citable evidence of her specific statements or votes on judicial independence, executive-oversight fights, or responses to subpoena disputes in the current Congress was limited in available search results. Given the rubric’s instruction to score conservatively when evidence is thin, this category reflects a generally supportive but not extensively documented record rather than a demonstrated record of aggressive oversight leadership.

Conduct in Office (20/20)

No findings from any nonpartisan body — House Ethics Committee, Senate Ethics Committee, GAO, or an Inspector General — turned up against Blunt Rochester in searches. The only ethics-related material found was her own legislative record of voting for ethics-reform bills, not any adverse finding. Per the rubric, the absence of documented nonpartisan findings merits full marks.

Bipartisan Cooperation (4/10)

Blunt Rochester has an active bipartisan legislative record, though concentrated in economic and housing policy rather than democracy-specific legislation. In the Senate she introduced the bipartisan Accelerating Home Building Act with Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio (bluntrochester.senate.gov) and the bipartisan Streamlining American Manufacturing Strategy Act with Republican Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina (Sen. Ted Budd’s office). Her office also touted the passage of the “21st Century Road to Housing Act,” describing it as including “five bipartisan Blunt Rochester bills” (bluntrochester.senate.gov), and as a House member she authored the bipartisan Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act, which passed the House (Philadelphia Inquirer). Because this bonus category specifically rewards bipartisan work on democracy-adjacent legislation, and her flagship voting-rights work (the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act) was a largely party-line effort, the score here is modest — reflecting genuine, demonstrated bipartisan capacity, but not concentrated in the election/democracy space the rubric targets.