The legislation aims to guarantee a peaceful transition from one president to the next, after the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill showed how existing law could be rigged to disrupt the process. One measure would make it more difficult for lawmakers to challenge a state’s electoral votes when Congress meets to do its official count. It would also clarify that the vice president has no discretion over outcomes and lay out the steps to begin a presidential transition. A second bill would increase penalties for threats and intimidation of election officials and encourage measures to improve the Postal Service’s handling of mail-in ballots. Alarmed by the events of Jan. 6 that exposed long-standing flaws in the law governing the election count process, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin III, D-West Virginia, met for months to try to agree on a rewrite. “From the beginning, our bipartisan group shared a vision of writing legislation to fix the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Election Counting Act of 1887,” 16 senators said in a joint statement. “Through numerous meetings and discussions among our colleagues as well as conversations with a wide variety of election experts and legal scholars, we have developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for the system of certification and counting of electoral votes for the president and vice president.”
Key revelations from the January 6 hearings
Although the authors lack the minimum 10 Republican senators needed to guarantee the legislation could make it past a final vote, they hope to gather enough support for a vote later this year. The legislative effort began after the Jan. 6 attack, which unfolded as Congress was meeting for the traditionally regular vote count that is the last official confirmation of presidential election results before the inauguration. Ahead of the uprising, Mr Trump tried unsuccessfully to persuade Vice President Mike Pence – who presided over the session as Senate president – to unilaterally block the tally, citing false allegations of voter fraud. The new legislation focuses mostly on electoral vote manipulation and does not incorporate broader voting protections that Democrats are seeking after some states enacted new laws seen as making it harder for people to vote after Democratic victories in 2020. Senate Republicans had previously blocked those who vote for measures. There is widespread sentiment in Congress that some steps should be taken to strengthen the law for counting elections, although there may be disagreement about the specific provisions. “The election count law needs to be fixed,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, told reporters Tuesday, saying he was “sympathetic” to the goals of those working on the legislation. Under the vote-counting overhaul proposal, a state’s governor would be designated as the sole person responsible for submitting the state’s voter list after the presidential vote, barring other officials from doing so. In an effort to prevent frivolous attempts to challenge a state’s election count, it would take at least one-fifth of the House and Senate to file an objection — a significant increase from the current limit of one House member and one senator. The objections would still have to be supported by a majority of the House and Senate. After a standoff over the 2020 presidential transition, when Trump administration officials initially refused to provide President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. with funding and office space to begin inauguration preparations, the legislation would allow to more than one candidate to receive transition resources if the result remained in doubt. After a push by Mr. Trump and his allies to get Pence to manipulate the election numbers in Mr. Trump’s favor, the legislation would define the vice president’s role as mostly ceremonial and that he “has no authority to determine, to accept, reject or otherwise resolve disputes for electors.” In addition to Ms. Collins, the other Republican members of the bipartisan group supporting reform are Senators Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska. , North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Indiana’s Todd Young. In addition to Mr. Manchin, the Democrats are Senators Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, Chris Coons of Delaware, Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Mark Warner of Virginia.
