Congress is move forward With regard to the reform of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, including Election Count Reform and the Presidential Transition Improvement Act In a massive spending bill that must be approved in the next few days to keep the federal government funded:
The bill was made by Attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 A group of President Donald Trump supporters is trying to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Lawmakers have warned that similar efforts could disrupt future election counts without changing the process.
The final published version may be close to developed by a bipartisan group of senatorsinstead of the possibly slightly better version Passed the House of Representatives in September. But either version would be a significant improvement over the status quo.
in a july postwork-based andy craigThen came the Cato Institute (a leading expert on ECA reform), where I summarized the three main goals that the reform bill achieves:
1. In effect, prevent state governments from changing the rules after Election Day to reverse an election result they don’t like.
2. Prevent Congress from throwing out electoral votes for false reasons (as some Republican members of Congress are trying to do after the 2020 election).
3. Make it clearer that the Vice President does not have the authority to invalidate electoral votes (a step that then-Vice President Mike Pence rightly refused to take in January 2021, despite Donald Trump’s urging).
Both the Senate and House bills make significant improvements on these three points, so, Praised by election law experts across the political spectrum. Craig provides a helpful breakdown of the similarities and differences between the two bills here.
ECA reform will not fix all the ills that plague American democracy. But it will close some important holes exposed by the traumatic aftermath of the 2020 election. Not only is this reform bill good enough for government jobs, it’s one of the few really good bills in Congress, and that’s it!
