Congress eyes strongest response yet to Jan. 6 attack
By MARY CLARE JALONICK today
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats are voting this week on changes to a 19th century law for certifying presidential elections, their strongest legislative response yet to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
The vote to overhaul the Electoral Count Act, expected Wednesday, comes as a bipartisan group of senators is moving forward with a similar bill. Lawmakers in both parties have said they want to change the arcane law before it is challenged again.
Trump and his allies tried to exploit the law’s vague language in the weeks after the election as they strategized how they could keep Joe Biden out of office, including by lobbying Vice President Mike Pence to simply object to the certification of Biden’s victory when Congress counted the votes on Jan. 6.
Pence refused to do so, but it was clear afterward that there was no real legal framework, or recourse, to respond under the 1887 law if the vice president had tried to block the count. The House and Senate bills would better define the vice president’s ministerial role and make clear that he or she has no say in the final outcome.
Both versions would also make it harder for lawmakers to object if they don’t like the results of an election, clarify laws that could allow a state’s vote to be delayed, and ensure that there is only one slate of legal electors from each state. One strategy by Trump and his allies was to create alternate slates of electors in key states Biden won, with the ultimately unsuccessful idea that they could be voted on during the congressional certification on Jan. 6 and result in throwing the election back to Trump.
“We’ve got to make this more straightforward to respect the will of the people,” said Senate Rules Committee Chairman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., whose committee will hold a vote on the legislation bill next week. “We don’t want to risk Jan. 6 happening again,” she said.
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https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-biden-donald-trump-presidential-election-2020-2eb7ce4953da28532b62b0bb71f2f657
