Reforms to Electoral Count Act Poised To Sail Through Senate

A bill that would modify the 1887 Electoral Count Act to eliminate the provisions that President Trump and his supporters sought to use to overturn the 2020 election appears to be poised to sail through the Senate.Senator Grassley, the Iowa Republican, signed on as the 10th GOP co-sponsor of the measure, giving it a filibuster-proof majority in the upper chamber if every Democrat aligns behind it. Senator Hickenlooper of Colorado also recently signed on as the bill’s eighth Democratic co-sponsor.“Should the House pass the bill too, it would mark the first significant bipartisan legislation passed that aims to reform and protect democracy since the 2020 attack on the Capitol,” a Protect Democracy spokesman, Blake Jelley, tells the Sun.The bill in question is aimed at certain procedural provisions in the certification of presidential elections, including the role of the vice president.In what amounts to a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s pressure on Vice President Pence to use his role in the certification of votes to change the outcome of the 2020 election, the bill will now explicitly state that the vice president’s function is strictly ceremonial — a rubber stamp.The bill also targets frivolous challenges to election results, introducing measures to make it more difficult for lawmakers to challenge the results and explicitly specifying who exactly is responsible for sending a state’s electors to Congress.The Constitution gives states the right to decide how presidential electors are chosen, with each state choosing electors by popular vote. These electors then send their votes to a joint session of Congress, where the vice president opens the ballots.The Electoral Count Act lays out the rules for how votes in the Electoral College are to be counted. The proposed reforms are intended to ensure that votes are counted in accordance with the results in each state.The January 6 Committee is also expected to suggest changes to the act, which could be aimed at ensuring states choose their electors according to the results of the vote in their state.As the Sun has reported, many have expressed concerns about the reforms to the Electoral Count Act as it relates to the independent state legislature theory, which asserts that a state’s legislature may appoint its own slate of electors even after holding an election.Those concerns have grown since the Supreme Court agreed to hear Moore v. Harper, a case that could either endorse or reject the theory, this fall.A Florida State University professor, Michael Morley, says that even a broad reading of the theory would not allow for state legislatures to appoint their own electors, because federal law “constrains a legislature’s ability to directly appoint electors.”If passed, the reform bill proposed in the Senate would be the first piece of bipartisan legislation aimed at ensuring election security; it will possibly not be the last, with other reforms and suggestions expected in the future.There is an urgency to this bill, with Senators eager to resolve the issue before the midterm elections and the beginning of the 2024 presidential cycle.“My personal sense on this is, we need to move on this pretty quickly, and certainly we need to get it done this year, if not this month,” the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, Senator Blunt of Missouri, said of the issue. “I just don’t see any reason to carry this discussion into the presidential cycle itself.”

Reforms to Electoral Count Act Poised To Sail Through Senate

More from the New York Sun

The GOP Will Beat History in the Midterms by Sticking to Its America-First Values

Mamdani Wins Release of Columbia Student Detained by DHS After ‘Productive’ Meeting on Housing With Trump

Judge Rejects ‘Ragtag’ Theories in Lawsuit Seeking To Halt White House Ballroom Project

More from the New York Sun

The GOP Will Beat History in the Midterms by Sticking to Its America-First Values

Mamdani Wins Release of Columbia Student Detained by DHS After ‘Productive’ Meeting on Housing With Trump

Judge Rejects ‘Ragtag’ Theories in Lawsuit Seeking To Halt White House Ballroom Project

Lawrence Summers’s Due Process

Arab Diplomats Help Undermine Palestinian Attempt To Win UN Leadership Position

In This Divisive Movie Star Era, Is Margot Robbie So Popular Because She’s Actually Enjoying Herself?

Hillary Clinton’s Epstein Deposition Is Paused After GOP Lawmaker Leaks Photo to Conservative Podcaster

Bill O’Reilly To Sub In for NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, Vows To ‘Bring Back’ the Format of ‘The O’Reilly Factor’