A bipartisan group of senators reportedly is near settlement on recommending reforms to a flawed, archaic legislation that former President Donald Trump abused in his try to overturn the 2020 election. The Electoral Count Act of 1887 provides the vice chairman a ceremonial function in approving state vote counts, however it’s worded vaguely sufficient that Trump claimed, outrageously, that it offered Vice President Mike Pence authority to unilaterally throw out Joe Biden’s victory.
A bipartisan group of senators reportedly is near settlement on recommending reforms to a flawed, archaic legislation that former President Donald Trump abused in his try to overturn the 2020 election. The Electoral Count Act of 1887 provides the vice chairman a ceremonial function in approving state vote counts, however it’s worded vaguely sufficient that Trump claimed, outrageously, that it offered Vice President Mike Pence authority to unilaterally throw out Joe Biden’s victory.
Responsible leaders in each events perceive the urgency of fixing that and different problematic language within the Electoral Count Act now, earlier than a Republican takeover of Congress makes it unimaginable to maneuver any laws on this problem. But some Democrats are holding up a deal as a result of they need to roll legitimate however extra contentious voting-rights points into it. They’re taking part in a harmful recreation. They ought to settle for this half loaf instantly, whereas they nonetheless can.
The act was written in response to the contested presidential election of 1876, during which a number of states despatched competing slates of electors to Washington. The legislation was an try to make clear how Congress ought to determine such disputes. Unfortunately, its muddled language additional confused the difficulty, whereas creating a gap that would permit unhealthy actors to deprave the method. Among these is a provision that enables one consultant and one senator to set off the method of difficult states’ election outcomes. It was this provision that Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., exploited to show what ought to’ve been the routine election certification right into a showdown that ended with a mob sacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Among the adjustments that the majority fair-minded reformers agree is required is to set the bar for such challenges a lot larger than it presently is. It ought to take a couple of self-serving member of every chamber to mild that fuse, and it ought to take greater than a naked majority of every chamber to reject states’ outcomes. Messing with electoral slates must be the heaviest of lifts.
Similarly, the vice chairman’s purely ceremonial function must be specified. No cheap individual may argue that the legislation as written provides the vice chairman energy to overturn an election. But Trump backers made precisely that declare, and it was solely Pence’s accountable refusal to indulge them that prevented a constitutional disaster.
The bipartisan working group, headed by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., reportedly is normally settlement on these reforms. The downside, Collins mentioned final week, is that some Democrats need to relitigate different points from their latest failed try at omnibus voting rights laws.
Such laws shouldn’t be controversial, however it’s, and it might but stop Congress from performing to move off any future replay of Jan. 6 — or worse. Democrats ought to settle for this restricted however necessary safeguard for democracy, and dwell to combat one other day on the remaining.