Congress on Friday gave final passage to legislation changing the arcane law that governs the certification of a presidential contest, the strongest effort yet to avoid a repeat of Donald Trump\u2019s violence-inflaming push to reverse his loss in the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The House passed an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act as part of its massive, end-of-the-year spending bill, after the Senate approved identical wording Thursday. The legislation now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden hailed the provisions\u2019 inclusion in the spending bill in a statement Friday, calling it \u201ccritical bipartisan action that will help ensure that the will of the people is preserved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s the most significant legislative response Congress has made yet to Trump\u2019s aggressive efforts to upend the 2020 election results, and a step that been urged by the House select committee that conducted the most thorough investigation into the violent siege of the Capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The provisions amending the 1887 law \u2014 which has long been criticized as poorly and confusingly written \u2014 won bipartisan support and would make it harder for future presidential losers to prevent the ascension of their foes, as Trump tried to do on Jan. 6, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a monumental accomplishment, particularly in this partisan atmosphere, for such a major rewrite of a law that\u2019s so crucial to our democracy,\u201d said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles. \u201cThis law goes a long way toward shutting down the avenues Trump and his allies tried to use in 2020, and could have been exploited in future elections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Jan. 6, Trump targeted Congress\u2019 ratification of the Electoral College\u2019s vote. He tried to exploit the vice president\u2019s role in reading out the states\u2019 electors to get Mike Pence to block Biden from becoming the next president by omitting some states Biden won from the roll. The new provisions make clear that the vice president\u2019s responsibilities in the process are merely ceremonial and that the vice president has no say in determining who actually won the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new legislation also raises the threshold required for members of Congress to object to certifying the electors. Before, only one member of the House and Senate respectively had to object to force a roll call vote on a state\u2019s electors. That helped make objections to new presidents something of a routine partisan tactic \u2014 Democrats objected to certifying both of George W. Bush\u2019s elections and Trump\u2019s in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those objections, however, were mainly symbolic and came after Democrats had conceded that the Republican candidates won the presidency. On Jan. 6, 2021, Republicans forced a vote on certifying Biden\u2019s wins in Arizona and Pennsylvania even after the violent attack on the Capitol, as Trump continued to insist falsely that he won the election. That led some members of Congress to worry the process could be too easily manipulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the new rules, one-fifth of each chamber would be required to force a vote on states\u2019 slates of electors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new provisions also ensure only one slate of electors makes it to Congress after Trump and his allies\u00a0unsuccessfully tried to create alternative slates of electors\u00a0in states Biden won. Each governor would now be required to sign off on electors, and Congress cannot consider slates submitted by different officials. The bill creates a legal process if any of those electors are challenged by a presidential candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The legislation would also close a loophole that wasn\u2019t used in 2020 but election experts feared could be, a provision that state legislatures can name electors in defiance of their state\u2019s popular vote in the event of a \u201cfailed\u201d election. That term has been understood to mean a contest that was disrupted or so in doubt that there\u2019s no way to determine the actual winner, but it is not well-defined in the prior law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now a state could move the date of its presidential election \u2014 but only in the event of \u201cextraordinary and catastrophic events,\u201d like a natural disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hasen said that while the changes are significant, dangers still remain to democracy, noting that in Arizona, the Republican nominee for governor, Kari Lake, was waiting on a ruling Friday in a lawsuit she filed to overturn the victory of her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNobody should think that passage of this legislation means we\u2019re out of the woods,\u201d Hasen said. \u201cThis is not one and done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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