#Electoral Count Act of 1887

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley on Wednesday expressed support for proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act, which would clarify rules governing presidential elections and the counting of electoral votes.

"I have not read the bill, but I have read a lot about the bill," Grassley, a Republican, told reporters Wednesday. "And I think that I'm going to vote for it."

Grassley said he would wait to read it before making a final decision about his vote.

The bipartisan effort to amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887 comes after former-President Donald Trump and his allies attempted to exploit ambiguities in the law following the 2020 election to reject electoral votes that were cast for President Joe Biden.

The bill will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the evenly divided Senate. Even if all 50 Senate Democrats are in favor, it will need at least 10 Republican votes. Nine Republicans were part of the bipartisan negotiations on the bill, and Grassley's support could bring them to 10.

The legislation would clarify that the Vice President's role in presiding over the counting of electoral votes is purely ceremonial, ensuring that the Vice President would not have the power to unilaterally reject or accept electoral votes.

Trump and his allies unsuccessfully pressured former-Vice President Mike Pence to interfere with the counting of electoral votes over objections from White House attorneys, according to testimony given to the House Jan. 6 Committee.

Grassley said that change is among the reasons he would support the bill.

"I don't know what the... law specifically says on this subject," he said. "It probably doesn't say anything, and then people thought well, maybe the Vice President has some discretion. He should not have had this discretion ever. And this law will make it clear that he won't have that discretion."

Grassley said he also supports a provision that would raise the threshold for objecting to electors in Congress. It would require one-fifth of the House and one-fifth of the Senate to bring an objection, a much higher bar than the current law, which allows one member of the House and one member of the Senate to bring an objection.

"This is going to make those challenges much more legitimate if there's a reason for having them," he said.

The measure also would require Congress accept as valid only one slate of electors submitted by each state and certified by that state’s governor or another official. In 2020, multiple states attempted to submit alternate slates of presidential electors without the legal basis to do so.

Derek Muller, a University of Iowa law professor who teaches election law, testified Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, speaking in favor of the proposal.

“At every turn, the bill offers more clarity, more precision and more stability,” Muller said.

Muller said there are significant risks if Congress fails to pass the legislation and leaves the current Electoral Count Act in place without changes.

“Some have attempted to exploit ambiguities over the years, most significantly in 2020,” he said. “To leave those in place ahead of the 2024 election is to invite serious mischief.”

#us politics #news #the des Moines register #2022 #sen. chuck grassley #Republicans #conservatives #gop #Electoral Count Act #Electoral Count Act of 1887 #2020 election #donald trump #trump administration #mike pence #Senate Rules and Administration Committee #Derek Muller #iowa

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

On this day in 1974 (H/t Mary Elaine LeBey)

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 9, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage, and Luke Broadwater yesterday reported that in a memo dated December 6, 2020, Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro laid out a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that he acknowledged was “a bold, controversial strategy” that he believed the Supreme Court would “likely” reject. 

Still, he presented the plan—while apparently trying to distance himself from it by writing “I’m not necessarily advising this course of action”—because he thought it “would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats, and would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”  

The plan was essentially what the Trump campaign ultimately tried to pursue. It called for Trump-Pence electors in six swing states Biden had won to meet and vote for Trump, and then to make sure that in each of those states there was a lawsuit underway that “might plausibly” call into question Biden’s victory there. Then, Vice President Mike Pence would take the position that he had the power not simply to open the votes but also to count them, and that the 1887 Electoral Count Act that clarified those procedures was unconstitutional. 

Key to selling this strategy, Chesebro wrote, was messaging that constructing two slates of electors was “routine,” and he laid out a strategy of taking events and statements out of context to suggest support for that messaging. 

This was, of course, a plan to deprive American voters of their right to have their votes counted, as the federal grand jury’s recent indictment of former president Trump charged, but Chesebro concluded: “it seems advisable for the campaign to seriously consider this course of action and, if adopted, to carefully plan related messaging.” 

Three days later, Chesebro wrote specific instructions to create those fraudulent electors, and they were off to the races. 

Chesebro is identified as Co-Conspirator 5 in the grand jury’s recent indictment of Trump. 

It is an astonishing thing to read this memo today. 

Forty-nine years ago, on August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon wrote one line to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “I hereby resign the Office of President of the United States.” In late July the House Judiciary Committee had voted to recommend articles of impeachment against the president for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress for his attempt to cover up the involvement of his people in the June 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The Watergate break-in was part of the Nixon campaign’s attempt to rig the 1972 election, in this case by bugging the Democrats’ headquarters, and Republicans wanted no part of it. When the White House produced a “smoking gun” tape on August 5, revealing that Nixon had been in on the cover-up since June 23, 1972—and implying that he had been in on the bugging itself—those Republicans who had been defending Nixon abandoned him. 

On the night of August 7, 1974, a group of Republican lawmakers led by Arizona senator Barry Goldwater met with Nixon in the Oval Office and told him that the House as a whole would vote to impeach him and the Senate would vote to convict. Nixon decided to step down.

Although Nixon did not admit any guilt, maintaining he was resigning only because the time it would take to vindicate himself would distract from his presidential duties, his replacement, Gerald R. Ford, granted “a full, free, and absolute pardon” to Nixon “for all offenses against the United States which he…has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974.”

Ford said that the trial of a former president would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.”

Only fifteen years later, the expectation that a president would not be prosecuted came into play again when members of President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council ignored Congress’s 1985 prohibition on aid to the Nicaraguan Contras who were fighting against the socialist Nicaraguan government. The administration illegally sold arms to Iran and funneled the profits to the Contras. 

When the story of the Iran-Contra affair broke in November 1986, government officials continued to break the law, shredding documents that Congress had subpoenaed. After fourteen administration officials were indicted and eleven convicted, the next president, George H. W. Bush, who had been Reagan’s vice president, pardoned them on the advice of his attorney general William Barr. (Yes, that William Barr.)

The independent prosecutor in the case, Lawrence Walsh, worried that the pardons weakened American democracy. They “undermine…the principle…that no man is above the law,” he said. Pardoning high-ranking officials “demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences.” 

Walsh’s warning seems to be coming to life. The Republican Party now stands behind a man whose legal troubles currently include indictment on 40 counts for taking and hiding classified national security documents and on four counts of trying to steal an election in order to stay in power. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Nixon Resigns #Mary Elaine LeBey #history #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From an American #Nixon #Republicans #presidential pardons #republican wrongdoing #justice #rule of law

[cultml]

[ausetkmt]

Common Dreams: Raskin Says Electoral College Is a 'Danger' to Democracy and Should Be Abandoned

Common Dreams: Raskin Says Electoral College Is a 'Danger'.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, soon to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said Sunday that the Electoral College is a "danger" to U.S. democracy and should be abandoned in favor of presidential elections decided by the popular vote.

"The Electoral College now, which has given us five popular vote losers as president in our history, twice in this century alone, has become a danger, not just to democracy, but to the American people," Raskin (D-Md.) said in an appearance on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "It was a danger on January 6. There are so many curving byways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief."

"We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else: Whoever gets the most votes wins," added Raskin, who served on the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Axiosreported earlier this year that some members of the January 6 panel wanted "big changes on voting rights—and even to abolish the Electoral College—while others are resisting proposals to overhaul the U.S. election system."

In its final report, the House committee stopped short of calling for the abolition of the Electoral College, something progressives have demanded for years.

The Maryland Democrat's comments came days after Congress approved reforms to the Electoral Count Act, an obscure 1887 law that governs the tallying of Electoral College votes.

"For years, legal scholars have worried the law was poorly written and in need of clarification, and former President Donald Trump and his allies targeted the law's ambiguities in their attempts to overturn the 2020 election," NPR noted last week. "In the time after voting ended in 2020and results were certified, Trump and his team argued that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to interfere with the counting of electoral votes because the law as it currently stands names the vice president as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress where those votes are counted."

"The update passed by the Senate would clarify that the vice president's role in the proceedings is purely ceremonial," the outlet explained. "Importantly, the measure also would raise the bar for objecting to a state's slate of electors. As it stands now, it takes just one member of the House and one senator to challenge a state's electors and send both chambers into a potentially days-long debate period, even without legitimate concerns."

While welcoming the newly passed reforms, Raskin said Sunday that they won't "solve the fundamental problem."

"We know that the Electoral College doesn't fit anymore, which is why I'm a big supporter of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, where it's bubbling up from below," Raskin continued. "There are now 15 or 16 states and the District of Columbia who've said, 'We're going to cast our electors for the winner of the national vote once we get 270 electors in our coalition.'"

The compact—which has the goal of guaranteeing the presidency to "the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia"—has thus far been backed by 16 U.S. jurisdictions with a total of 195 electoral votes.

Last week, Florida State Rep. Michael Gottlieb—a Democrat—filed legislation that would make the Sunshine State the latest to join the compact. The bill is expected to face opposition from Republicans in the state, including Gov. Ron DeSantis—a possible 2024 presidential candidate.

#electoral college #abolish the electoral college #Raskin Says Electoral College Is a 'Danger' to Democracy and Should Be Abandoned #one vote one person

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

June 12, 2022 (Sunday)

Thursday’s presentation by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol made quite a splash… and the ripples are still spreading.

Today in the New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd reacted to Thursday’s revelations that Trump was “deadly serious about overthrowing the government,” by laying out the main points: Trump knew he had lost the election, and yet was willing to see his vice president hanged in order to avoid being labeled a loser. Dowd called former president Trump an “American monster,” and compared him unfavorably to Frankenstein’s monster, who at least “has self-awareness, and a reason to wreak havoc… [and] knows how to feel guilty and when to leave the stage.” Our monster, in contrast, is driven only by “pure narcissistic psychopathy– and he refuses to leave the stage or cease his vile mendacity.” 

Yesterday, Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney reported that on January 5, 2021, then-vice president Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob wrote a three-page memo concluding that what the president and his supporters were demanding Pence do the next day would break the 1887 Electoral College Act– that is, the law– in four different ways. The memo responded to John Eastman’s memo laying out the plan for Pence to hand the election to Trump by refusing to count a number of Biden electors. Jacob noted that Eastman himself “acknowledges that his proposal violates several provisions of statutory law.” In addition, both historical court decisions and one as recent as the day before contradicted Eastman’s plan. 

Jacob’s memo concluded that if Pence did what Trump demanded, the best possible outcome was that “The Vice President would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress, as well as most or all of the applicable State legislatures….” It is no wonder that Pence declined to participate. 

Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who is on the January 6th committee, called out Republicans who have rallied behind the Big Lie, saying: “I don’t really know many people around [Trump] who truly believe the election was stolen,” and if Trump “truly believes the election was stolen, he’s not mentally competent to be President.”

(he wasn't PRIOR to 2016 either!!!!)

After Thursday’s revelation by committee vice-chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) that Representative Scott Perry (R-PA), as well as “multiple other Republican congressmen,” tried to get Trump to pardon them for their participation in his plan to overturn the election, Perry’s spokesperson called the allegation a “laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie.”

But today on ABC News, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is on the January 6 committee, said the panel has evidence. Schiff said: “We will show the evidence that we have that members of Congress were seeking pardons…. I think that is some of the most compelling evidence of a consciousness of guilt…. Why would members do that if they felt that their involvement in this plot to overturn the election was somehow appropriate?”

Asked if the committee had evidence for their statement that congresspeople had asked for pardons, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), also on the panel, and a constitutional lawyer, told CNN’s Dana Bash, “everything we’re doing is documented by evidence, unlike the Big Lie, which is based on nonsense, as former Attorney General Barr said, everything we’re doing is based on facts.”

As the atmosphere around Trump gets hotter, there are cracks appearing in the Republican Party’s support for the former president. Today, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, said on Fox News Sunday that former president Trump is “politically, morally responsible” for the events of January 6, although Hutchinson expressed the opinion that the committee has not yet established that the former president is criminally liable. Hutchinson said, “Republicans need to do a lot of soul searching as to what is the right thing here and what is the right thing for our democracy in the future, and not simply adhere to the basic instincts of some of our base.”It is not clear that his colleagues will heed Hutchinson’s call. 

Yesterday, demonstrators across the country called for stronger gun safety laws, and the need for them is heightened by the fact that today is the sixth anniversary of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, when a gunman murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others. Americans appear to have had enough of the carnage at our schools and supermarkets, nightclubs and churches: more than 80% of Americans want background checks before gun purchases and 75% of adults want to limit purchases of AR-15 style weapons to those over 21.

Today a bipartisan group of 20 senators announced they had reached an agreement on what they are willing to put into a package of gun-safety regulations. If successfully written into a bill and then enacted, this would be the first major federal gun safety legislation in almost 30 years, which is astonishing considering just what weak sauce it is. 

The agreement calls for stronger red flag laws to help keep guns out of the hands of those a court has determined are a significant danger to themselves or others, “consistent with state and federal due process and constitutional protections”; investment in mental health services; an end to the so-called “boyfriend loophole” that allows unmarried partners with domestic violence records to own guns; more funding for school safety measures; penalties for those who buy guns illegally; and longer reviews for gun buyers who are under 21

.It seems likely the Democrats want the deal to establish the principle of federal regulation of guns, and the Republicans want it to say they’re doing something at a time when American voters are demanding action on gun safety. If it does little to change outcomes, Republicans will be able to say that regulations don’t make us safer.

Significantly, in his statement announcing the framework, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), did not mention gun safety or gun control, simply saying that he supports a bipartisan agreement that resolves “key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, and earns broad support in the Senate.” All of those terms reinforce Republican arguments for solving our epidemic of gun deaths.  

Meanwhile, what it means to empower Trump’s base became clear yesterday when law enforcement officers in Idaho arrested 31 members of the so-called “Patriot Front” white supremacist hate group. The men intended to disrupt Coeur D’Alene’s Pride in the Park, an event advertised as a “family-friendly, community event celebrating diversity and building a stronger and more unified community for ALL.” The Patriot Front rebranded itself from so-called Vanguard America after one of that group's members plowed a car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, killing counterprotester Heather Heyer, and wounding many others.

  Members of the gang arrested yesterday came from 11 different states, and one of those arrested for conspiring to riot– a misdemeanor– was the group’s founder, Thomas Ryan Rousseau. 

Farther to the south, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, whom Trump has called a “great friend” and whose reelection he supports, has expanded his claim that the upcoming election in which he is running is being stolen. Bolsonaro is 25 percentage points behind his chief rival in the polls, but says he will lose only if the vote is fraudulent. Now, he has enlisted the support of the military in his claims. Bolsonaro recently said that election officials had “invited the armed forces to participate in the electoral process,” and reminded an audience that “the supreme chief of the armed forces is named Jair Messias Bolsonaro.” He insists that the military is only trying to keep the vote clean and safe. “For the love of God,” he said recently, “no one is engaging in undemocratic acts.”  

(THE TROPICAL TRUMP!!)

[justiceheartwatcher]

Indict the Biden Crime Family - Not Donald Trump

To understand history is to understand just how outrageous the latest indictment of Donald Trump is.  Biden’s uber-partisan and ultra-weaponized DOJ  asserts Trump committed fraud for using the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to object to a stolen 2020 election.  In fact, the Act was created EXACTLY for such purpose.

In the 1886 presidential election, Democrat Sam Tilden won the popular vote against Republican Rutherford Hayes.  However, Tilden was one shy of the 185 electoral votes needed to beat Hayes even as evidence surfaced of fraud and intimidation of Republican voters in several key battleground states.   Sound familiar?

....

The bottom backfiring line: Trump gets another fake indictment, the Biden crime family goes uninvestigated, the American people lose more faith in our judicial system, and Trump rises further in the polls.

[ifucankeepit]

GA Get Trump

According to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and our First Amendment--POTUS has the right to object. Democrats objected in 1969, 2001, 2005, 2017. The rule of law is on Trump's side and the American people are finally seeing behind the DOJ curtain.

[mubashirnews]

The Electoral College is hazardous to democracy, Raskin says

The Electoral College is hazardous to democracy, Raskin says

“It was a danger on January 6th,” said Raskin, who served on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, “There are so many curving by-ways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief.” The Electoral College was created by the Founding Fathers in the U.S. Constitution; the Electoral Count Act of 1887 has…

View On WordPress

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

After months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of Senators on Wednesday announced two proposals related to election administration, including one to reform the Electoral Count Act, a widely criticized 1887 law that governs the process of casting and counting Electoral College votes and that came under fresh scrutiny following attempts to invalidate the presidential election results on Jan. 6, 2021.

The plans were announced a day ahead of the House Select Committee's final scheduled prime time hearing on its investigation into the Capitol insurrection.

"From the beginning, our bipartisan group has shared a vision of drafting legislation to fix the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887," the U.S. Senators said in a joint statement.

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, led the effort to reform the law, which would need 60 votes to break a filibuster and pass the Senate. The proposal unveiled Wednesday to reform the Electoral Count Act has 16 co-sponsors, including nine Republicans. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has signaled he's open to updating the old law.

The law itself was created after a chaotic election in 1876 that saw Democrat Samuel Tilden win the popular vote but lose the presidency because of contested election results, as three Southern states sent in competing returns. A decade later, Congress enacted the Electoral Count Act to avoid a repeated fiasco by establishing a clearer process for Electoral College certification.

But as NPR's Miles Parks has reported, some legal experts argue the crafters of the law did a "terrible job."

Members of both major parties opened the door to updating the ECA nearly a year after the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which came following then-President Donald Trump's pressure campaign against his own Vice President to abandon his ceremonial role in tallying the results and help overturn the election.

Advocates for reforming the ECA argue that the law isn't clear enough about the roles the vice president and Congress play in certifying election results, and that that weakness was exploited by Trump and his allies to try to keep him in power.

HOW WOULD THE LAW CHANGE?

As the law exists now, only one member of the House and one member of the Senate are needed to challenge any state's set of electors. (These are the lawmakers who objected to the Electoral College count in 2021.)

The updated language would raise that threshold, shifting the requirement to 20% of the members of each chamber.

The proposal would also enact a few measures "aimed at ensuring that Congress can identify a single, conclusive slate of electors from each state," according to a fact sheet. The provisions include:

• identifying "each state's Governor, unless otherwise specified in the laws or constitution of a state in effect on Election Day, as responsible for submitting the certificate of ascertainment identifying that state's electors;"

• and requiring "Congress to defer to slates of electors submitted by a state's executive pursuant to the judgments of state or federal courts."

And the measure would "strike a provision of an archaic 1845 law that could be used by state legislatures to override the popular vote in their states by declaring a 'failed election' — a term that is not defined in the law."

The bill would also reaffirm that the "constitutional role of the Vice President, as the presiding officer of the joint meeting of Congress, is solely ministerial."

Some of the reforms came in part from proposals issued after the Democratic-led House Administration Committee shared a report in January, completed after months of review from legal experts.

The measure to reform the Electoral Count Act also includes a section to provide guidelines for when a new administration can receive federal resources for their transition into office.

IN THE SHADOW OF JAN. 6 HEARINGS

The Electoral Count Act has come up many times during the House Select Committee's hearings investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

During one of the panel's hearings, Greg Jacob, who served as chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence, said that had Pence obeyed Trump's demands to block or delay the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, he would have broken various provisions of the Electoral Count Act.

ECA REFORM PAIRED WITH ELECTION SECURITY PROPOSAL

The second measure released Wednesday would increase criminal penalties for individuals who threaten or intimidate election officials, poll watchers, voters or candidates; or who steal or alter election records or tamper with voting systems.

It would also aim to improve the handling of election mail by the U.S. Postal Service and reauthorize the Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency, for five years.

The proposal comes as election officials across the country have faced pressure and threats in the wake of Trump's lies about the 2020 election being stolen.

#us politics #news #biden administration #president joe biden #2022 #npr #us senate #Electoral Count Act #electoral college #house select committee #capitol protests #capitol riot #capitol riot investigation #Electoral Count Act of 1887 #sen. joe manchin #sen. susan collins #sen. mitch mcconnell #Samuel Tilden #us history #House Administration Committee #Greg Jacob #mike pence #u.s. postal service #usps #Election Assistance Commission #2020 election

[the-sayuri-rin]

NBC News: The government funding bill that Congress is expecting to pass this week includes a rewrite of the 1887 Electoral Count Act — the archaic law that Trump and his allies tried to use to steal the 2020 election. The rewrite is designed to prevent another Jan. 6.

[cultml]

#susan collins

[thepeopleempowered]

[thesheel]

Congress has passed precisely zero legislation to prevent another attack on the U.S. Capitol building one year after the attack. A committee is examining steps that could be taken, but its work has not yet been completed. However, some Republicans have recently proposed altering or repealing the Electoral Count Act, which would remove Congress's role in elections entirely. Mitch McConnell indicates that he is willing to talk about changing the Electoral Count Act. The move comes a year after a large number of Republicans protested President Joe Biden's victory being certified ahead of an attempted coup. Senators Sinema and Manchin expressed interest in working together on a bipartisan bill using the Electoral Count Act revision. But most Democrat lawmakers are advocating for more comprehensive election reforms and federalizing elections after this recent move from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who Democrats believe is attempting to divert attention away from their work on far more substantial electoral reform.  Nonetheless, in a brief interview, the GOP leader stated that he would be open to considering revisions to the 1887 legislation that permits members of Congress to contest election results. It remains far from certain what changes would be supported enough to pass through both the House and Senate. But some lawmakers from both parties believe more modest reforms are possible. Many centrist Democrats and some Republicans endorsed working on the Electoral Count Act. [caption id="attachment_12570" align="aligncenter" width="2194"] Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has denied calls to reform the electoral count act, and he believes that passing other voting rights legislations are crucial to save American democracy[/caption] Electoral Count Act - What Is It? There is a very limited role for Congress when it comes to choosing the next president. The Constitution stipulates that states have complete control over how elections are conducted. States, on the other hand, report their results to Congress once they have determined which candidate won.  The task of Congress is to simply count each state's electoral votes and declare the presidential election winner. The only thing that remains afterward is for the future president to take the oath of office. The 140 years old Electoral Count defines what Congress should do if there is a dispute over the candidate who won in a state. On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters invaded the Capitol while Congress was certifying those results. That night, amid broken windows and shattered glasses, lawmakers returned to affirm that night that Joe Biden had secured enough electoral votes for the presidency. Now that a year has passed since the Capitol Hill attack, lawmakers want to change the law to address the issue. Democrats are pushing for broader electoral reform; they're hoping to establish a holiday for Election Day. Moreover, their agenda includes allowing voting via mail, banning partisan gerrymandering, and eliminating black and hidden money from politics. To do so, they're discussing weakening the filibuster, which Republicans understandably see as a significant danger to their ability to obstruct Democratic legislation.  Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has already dismissed calls to only amend the Electoral Count Act rather than pass other legislation. He has threatened to modify the rules in the event of another GOP filibuster led by McConnell. In an attempt to win over 10 Republican Senators, the Democrats may amend the Electoral Count Act as part of a larger electoral bill. Senate Democrats intend to take votes on these election laws by Martin Luther King Jr. Day. [caption id="attachment_12572" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Some sensible decisions from Mike Pence saved America from absolute chaos and he could have made matters worse on January 6 by contributing with Trump in his stop the steal nonsense.[/caption]

The Need of Electoral Count Act: Time to Save American Democracy Senators have proposed a law that explicitly states a vice president cannot challenge election results in the Electoral College. It was the result of Trump's encouragement of then-Vice President Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role to challenge election results in key battleground states privately and publicly. Trump's efforts to pressure Vice President Pence to overturn key state results irked GOP senators at the time. Vice President Pence, who was also the Senate's president, declined, asserting that the Constitution limited his powers. Before January 6, former President Donald Trump brought  Republican state lawmakers from Michigan to the White House. During the phone call, he pleaded with Georgia's secretary of state to determine the precise number of votes he needed to win the state. In Wisconsin, he continues to show his support for lawmakers who are still working to overturn his election loss. All this activity occurs despite the fact that there were no disagreements among states regarding how the votes should be counted in 2020. Trump and his allies still tried to twist the law to claim that the vice president, who is responsible for certifying the next president, could simply reject state electors. At a rally days before January 6, Trump said, "I hope Mike Pence comes through for us." [caption id="attachment_12573" align="aligncenter" width="992"] Only one GOP senator Lisa Murkowski is supporting the voting rights bill of Democrats but Biden needs more people on board.[/caption] Republicans Opposing Voting Reforms: Just a Normal Day at the Office The Republican Party opposes the Democratic Party's proposals almost unanimously. Thus, broader reforms of the voting system are unlikely to come to any sort of agreement. In fact, Republicans in important areas have been pushing legislation to make voting more difficult, and Trump is endorsing people who claim the election was rigged to run future elections. On changing the Electoral Count Act, Republicans are saying that Democrats should also be held accountable if they blow this opportunity. So far, there has been only one voice in support of voting rights legislation, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and that is not enough to overcome a GOP filibuster in the Senate. It seems unlikely that Republicans will get on board with other significant changes to elections.   Final Thoughts Voting reforms are a hot debate in America these days, with President Biden himself pushing to end the filibuster to pass two stalled voting rights bills from Congress before the midterm elections. The role of Congress in certifying winners is perfunctory. Any other interpretation of the Electoral Count Act would be incorrect. Democrats argue that the Electoral Count Act is no alternative for stronger voting rights legislation to prevent bad actors from attempting to rig elections in states; they insist that more extensive voting rights measures are needed. In 2020, Trump's allies only succeeded in getting Congress to debate whether Arizona's votes were valid. At that time, the Capitol was attacked by rioters. In the wake of the riot, 139 Republicans in the House and eight senators voted not to recognize the results in Pennsylvania, despite the state having certified its electoral votes to Biden. At a time when the threat of a military coup after January 6, 2025, remains real, reforming the Electoral Count Act has become even more important. It should be self-evident that something has to be clarified and that a vice president should not be forced to say no to the president. Legislators could repeal the Electoral Count Act altogether. Due to the polarization of politics these days, both parties might try to overturn a House or Senate election using the law in the future. A power like this should not even be in the hands of Congress.

[sleepyleftistdemon]

[gold2558]

This is a pic of a GOP & Presidential in fact TRAITOR TO TRUMP AND CAN & IS ENTIRELY BE BLAMED FOR BIDEN AND DEMOCRATS BEING IN PARTY AND THEIR FORCING THE Suffering & OVERALL ACUTE NEGATIVITY IN OUR COUNTRY INVOLVING ECON,OPEN

BORDERS/ LACK OF SUPPLY, ultra high costs and taxation all created in abstentia now by his direct dereliction

of VP DUTIES BY NOT EXECUTING HIS ELECTORAL COLLEGE RULES AND BY CERTIFYING THAT FRAUDULENT VOTE OF 2020 I.e the (ECA) “Electoral Count Act of 1887 he refused to enforce it forcing recount and exposition of massive fraud which has been clearly proven by forensic audits since. This is not a traitor that you want anywhere near the Presidency or politics in general