Capito pleased the electoral reform act now law

Jan. 20—A bill that Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., championed is now law, and she praised the bipartisan effort to get the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act through.

The act will reform and modernize the outdated Electoral Count Act of 1887, ensuring the electoral votes tallied by Congress accurately reflect each state's vote for president, as well as promote a peaceful transition of power between the outgoing and incoming president.

"I am a firm supporter of our electoral system, which allows states to administer elections based on the tailored needs of their populations," Capito said in a statement Thursday. "The federal government should not be tasked with adjudicating lawfully cast votes, which is why I proudly introduced this legislation and provided support as a member of the Senate Rules Committee. I am thrilled to see this bill become law and reaffirm each state's rightful responsibility to administer their elections, help deter bad faith decertification efforts on both sides of the aisle, and provide the common-sense solutions we need."

Capito said that in developing the bills, she and her colleagues received input from state election officials as well as from an ideologically diverse group of election experts and legal scholars, including the American Law Institute.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., nine other Democratic senators and nine other GOP senators co-sponsored the bills.

"I am pleased that bipartisan support for this critical legislation continues to grow," Manchin said when the bills were developed. "From the beginning, our bipartisan group has shared a vision of drafting legislation to fix the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887, and today's announcement marks a significant step in the right direction. I encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support these much-needed, commonsense reforms, and we will continue our bipartisan efforts to get the bill signed into law."

Changes were pursued after the 2020 election and subsequent partisan battles over the electoral count as well as the less than smooth process of the transition of power before Pres. Joe Biden was sworn in as President in January 2021.

The Electoral Count Reform Act will reform and modernize the outdated Electoral Count Act of 1887 to ensure that electoral votes tallied by Congress accurately reflect each state's vote for President.

Capito said it will replace ambiguous provisions of the 19th-century law with clear procedures that maintain appropriate state and federal roles in selecting the President and Vice President of the United States as set forth in the U.S. Constitution.

A "single, conclusive slate of electors from each state" will result with the specific procedures from the act in place.

It also affirms that the constitutional role of the Vice President, as the presiding officer of the joint meeting of Congress, is "solely ministerial and that he or she does not have any power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate disputes over electors."

That was another issue that surfaced on Jan. 6, 2021, when then Vice President Mike Spence rightly refused to intervene in the electoral count.

Other provisions include:

—A Higher Objection Threshold, which raises the threshold to lodge an objection to electors to at least one-fifth of the duly chosen and sworn members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This change would reduce the likelihood of frivolous objections by ensuring that objections are broadly supported. Currently, only a single member of both chambers is needed to object to an elector or slate of electors. —A Protection of Each State's Popular Vote that stikes a provision of an archaic 1845 law that could be used by state legislatures to override the popular vote in their states by declaring a "failed election" — a term that is not defined in the law. Instead, this legislation specifies that a state could move its presidential election day, which otherwise would remain the Tuesday immediately following the first Monday in November every four years, only if necessitated by "extraordinary and catastrophic" events.

The Presidential Transition Improvement Act will help to promote the orderly transfer of power by providing clear guidelines for when eligible candidates for President or Vice President may receive federal resources to support their transition into office.

— Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com

Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com