Amid plans by some congressional Republicans to object to President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win this week and President Donald Trump’s potentially illegal attempt to fabricate a victory in Georgia, Attorney General Phil Weiser and other Democratic officials on Monday called such actions alarming.

“For anyone who believes in our Constitution and our commitment to federalism, you need to oppose this,” Weiser said on a call sponsored by the Voter Protection Program, an initiative of the Progressive State Leaders Committee but which has a bipartisan advisory board. 

Of Trump’s phone call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, asking the Republican election official to “find” him 11,780 votes to overcome Trump’s losing margin to Biden, Weiser gave credit to Raffensperger for “being strong” in supporting the rule of law.

“It is just another reminder of the difficult position public officials are being put in,” he added. “We have to recognize these attacks have a cost.”

Although the attorney general shared the sentiment of other Colorado Democrats that Trump’s phone call and the plan from dozens of congressional Republicans to attempt to nullify Biden’s victory on Wednesday were an affront to the rule of law, he stopped short of more explicit declarations of impropriety.

“[L]et’s be really clear on what this is: an attempt to steal an election from American voters,” wrote Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Twitter. 

“I’m not a lawyer, but if that’s not illegal, it should be,” U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper told Colorado Politics shortly after news broke of Trump’s phone call. The Washington Post obtained the recording of the Jan. 2 discussion and first reported about Trump’s demands on Sunday.

Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican former governor of New Jersey and administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush who joined Weiser on the Monday press call, characterized the intended congressional objectors as potentially “willing to overlook the Constitution and the rule of law to get the results they want.”

“You can’t just make stuff up, and that’s what they’re doing,” said Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, D-Ariz. “It is not normal or okay for anyone, not even the president, to call up a chief election official no matter their party and ask them to change election results.”

Hobbs, who represents a traditionally Republican state that Biden won, said she had not received a call similar to Raffensperger’s, although Arizona has also been the target of election-related litigation contesting the president-elect’s victory.

In Colorado, U.S. Reps. Doug Lamborn and Lauren Boebert intend to participate in Wednesday’s maneuver to nullify the legitimate election results. U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, who is also the chair of the Colorado Republican Party, said he will not support the GOP plot, explaining that “we have sworn an oath to promote the Constitution above our policy goals. We must count the electoral votes submitted by the states.”

Officials on the Voter Protection Program’s call declined to say specifically what consequences should result from tampering with the election returns, but Attorney General Josh Kaul, D-Wisc., urged an investigation and further legislative fixes. He pointed to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which failed to pass the last Congress, that would restore federal oversight following a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision rolling back voter protections.

Whitman added there is a responsibility to remind voters “how outside the norm” Republican lawmakers’ actions are prior to the next election.