Congress votes on changes to election certification laws

Lawmakers want to change electoral votes laws after Trump and his allies tried to abuse the law to keep Biden out of office after the election.

WASHINGTON — House Democrats are voting this week on changing a 19th-century law to certify a presidential election. January 6 Capitol Riot And former President Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss.

A vote to overhaul the Electoral College Act, expected Wednesday, will come as a bipartisan group of senators are pushing a similar bill. Lawmakers from both parties say they want to change the arcane law before it is challenged again.

playing cards And his allies have attempted to use the vague language of the law in the weeks following the election when strategizing ways to keep Joe Biden out of office, including lobbying the vice president. Mike Pence When Congress counts the votes on Jan. 6, simply oppose recognition of Biden’s victory.

Pence refused to do so, but it was later revealed that there was no real legal framework or recourse under the Act of 1887 to respond should the Vice President attempt to block the count. The House and Senate bills would better define the vice president’s role as a cabinet member and clarify that the vice president has no say in the final outcome.

Both versions make it harder for legislators to challenge election results if they are dissatisfied with them, clarify laws that can delay state ballots, and allow each state to have only one legal electoral vote. guaranteed. One strategy by Trump and his allies has been to create alternative lists of electoral votes in key states Biden won, the final votes to be cast during congressional certification on Jan. 6, to return the election to Trump. The idea ended in failure.

Senate Rules Committee Chairman Amy Klobuchar said, “We have to make this easier to respect the will of the people.” No,” she said.

The bill is a response to the violence of the day when a mob of Trump supporters pushed police aside, broke into buildings, and sabotaged Biden’s certification.The crowd was repeating Trump’s words Widespread voter fraud false allegations and demanded Pence’s death after it became clear that he would not overturn the election.

Democrats in both houses feel even more urgency about the issue now that Trump is considering running for president again and claiming the election was stolen. Many Republicans say they believe him even though 50 states have accredited Biden’s victory and courts across the country have dismissed false claims of Trump’s widespread fraud.

House votes are expected to fall mostly in line with party lines, but the Senate bill has Republican support, whose backers will defeat the filibuster and pass the Senate 50-50. hopes to get the 10 votes needed for But that may be difficult amidst the campaign for November’s midterm elections, and Republicans who are most aligned with Trump are sure to be against it.

Klobuchar said the Senate Rules Committee is expected to pass the bill next Tuesday with some adjustments, but a vote on the floor will likely wait until November or December.

Although similar, the House bill is broader in scope than the Senate bill, and there are some important differences between the two houses that lawmakers must resolve. The House bill was introduced Monday by House Control Committee Chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-California) and Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyoming), a Republican. A House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riots.

Like the Senate bill, the House bill requires a single set of electoral votes for each state submitted by the governor. The House bill also narrows the grounds on which members of Congress can oppose any state’s electoral votes and raises the threshold for the number of dissents required. Currently, the House and Senate are each debating and voting on whether to accept a state’s electors if there is only one objection from each House.

The House bill would instead require one-third of the House and one-third of the Senate to vote against a particular state’s electors in order to cast a vote. The Senate bill requires one-fifth of each House to vote against it.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri join dozens of Congressmen to oppose Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania, January 6, 2021 There were two such votes on Both the House and Senate voted to prove a just result.

Lofgren said elections should be decided by the American people, not Congress.

Those trying to overturn the election “used vague language and a low threshold to force Congress to play a role it really shouldn’t be playing,” she said.

The overall similarity of the House bill to the Senate bill may indicate that members of the House are willing to compromise in order to pass the bill. Some lawmakers have criticized the Senate bill for not going far enough. Maryland Representative Jamie Ruskin, who is a member of both the Jan. 6 Commission and the House of Representatives Trustees, said this summer that the Senate bill would address the challenges posed by current legislation. said it was not “far away”.

However, members of the House of Representatives know they will have to yield some to pass the 50-50 Senate. and the bill is sponsored by centrist Senator Joe Manchin, DW.V., and Senator Susan Collins, Maine Republican.

Collins said Monday, “We believe we can work this out, and we hope to do so.

A bipartisan group of senators worked for months to reach consensus on how to revamp the process, eventually settling on a series of proposals submitted in July.

Klobuchar’s Republican counterpart on the Senate Rules Committee, Missouri Senator Roy Brandt, has also endorsed.

“This shouldn’t carry over into another election cycle,” Brandt said at a Senate hearing in August.

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/nation-world/house-democrats-electoral-count-act/507-32e34fac-097f-413a-9c57-54ed64dbee49 Congress votes on changes to election certification laws

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