Then-Vice President Mike Pence was reportedly presiding over a joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 Electoral College results after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Proposed changes to the Voter Count Act would clarify the vice president’s role in counting the states’ electoral votes.
Erin Schaff / Pool / AFP via Getty Images
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Erin Schaff / Pool / AFP via Getty Images
Then-Vice President Mike Pence was reportedly presiding over a joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 Electoral College results after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Proposed changes to the Voter Count Act would clarify the vice president’s role in counting the states’ electoral votes.
Erin Schaff / Pool / AFP via Getty Images
A newly announced proposal to reform the Voter Count Act, a widely criticized 135-year-old law governing the voting and counting process of the electoral college, has garnered support. widely of electoral professionals.
The Vote Counts Act of 1887 has long been decried by legal experts, who say it is poorly written, vague, and antiquated.
Rebecca Green, co-director of the electoral law program at the College of William & Mary, said: “Imagine that there was a book law that required you to travel by horse and car. Here now.
The suggested changesmapped on Wednesday by a bipartisan group of senators, to ensure a peaceful transition of power, a tradition threatened in 2021, when then-President Donald Trump led a pressure campaign about state and congressional legislators, and his own vice president, to overturn the election results.
The reforms would make it clear that the vice president has a “minister only” role in counting the Electoral College votes as president of the Senate and make it harder for lawmakers to challenge the electoral votes. more state.
Lawmakers have warned that waiting to address flaws in existing legislation could lead to additional confusion and chaos in the next elections, as many fear that 2021 will repeat.
“If you don’t sleep well at night about the 2024 election, I think you could sleep a lot better if this bill passes,” said Ned Foley, director of the election law program at the State College of Law. Ohio, Moritz College of Law, says. Here now.
So far, the proposed changes have received many donate – However some above Left side say they don’t go far enough.
Yuval Levin, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, hailed the proposal as “constructive, balanced, and very promising.”
“This is a very good set of reforms,” Levin wrote in one op-ed in National rating. “Most of them are geared towards avoiding a repeat of the kinds of problems we’ve seen in 2020 – a situation where states are all doing their jobs but members of Congress, by order of the general The incumbent president is defeated, moving to sow doubt about the outcome by taking advantage of the ambiguity and laxity of the ECA.”
Similarly, Andy Craig of the Cato Institute leans towards liberalism Written Current legislation is a “positive time bomb and an invitation to a constitutional crisis” and calls the proposed reform an “important step forward in addressing that problem.”
“Amid concerns that this bill would be too narrow and only make cosmetic changes ordered by Republicans, compared with previous Democratic plans that went too far and were too complicated, the announcement This is really a fun medium,” Craig wrote.
The proposal is also receiving support from other corners.
The nonpartisan Business for America is mobilizing the business community with login mail to support the passage of the Voter Count Reform Act.
Sarah Bonk, founder and CEO of Business for America, said: “The future of our republic rests on effective election management, public confidence in the outcome and integrity of the results. peaceful transfer of power – and so are our markets and businesses.” . “Our country cannot afford a constitutional crisis.”
Foley, Ohio, noted that the timing of the reform legislation was crucial.
“The advantage of each side now behind the curtain of ignorance is to lock these procedures down, because everyone’s focus is on maybe one side is trying to do mischief, you know, after the 2024 election, either party can screw up under the current system,” he said. “And that’s why it’s much better for both parties to agree to eliminate all possibilities of misbehavior.”
