Chuck Schumer: Senate Likely To Take Up Last-Ditch Effort On Bill To Prevent Another Jan. 6

A bipartisan update to the Electoral Count Act, the law that governs the counting of Electoral College votes in presidential elections, is likely to be included in Congress’ end-of-year omnibus budget legislation, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

“I expect an omnibus will contain priorities both sides want to see passed into law, including more funding for Ukraine and the Electoral Count Act ... It will be great to get that done,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

Schumer’s statement is the first suggestion that reforms to the Electoral Count Act hashed out by a bipartisan group of senators over the course of the year will be included in the must-pass budget legislation.

The reforms aim to fix holes and inconsistencies in the 1887 law that were exploited by former President Donald Trump in his effort to overturn his 2020 election loss leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021.

The latest version of the bill would severely limit the ability to state legislatures to declare a “failed” election and appoint their own slates of electors, specify that the vice president’s role on Jan. 6 be solely ministerial, provide expedited judicial review of challenges to electoral vote counts and empower courts to review gubernatorial certifications of electors.

This would resolve the biggest issues with the law that were exposed in Trump’s efforts to steal the election. Trump’s plot aimed to exploit provisions potentially allowing state legislatures to declare an election to be “failed” and step in to overrule voters and appoint their own slate of electors, and the poorly defined language for the vice president’s role in presiding over the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) (L) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) led a bipartisan group of 20 senators that wrote legislation to reform the Electoral Count Act.

While no state legislatures declared a “failed” election in 2020, Trump and Republicans tried to get the GOP-controlled legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to do so and name pro-Trump electors. When that failed, they got phony GOP electors to write and submit themselves, fraudulently, as Trump electors to Congress.

The plan then required then-Vice President Mike Pence to use those phony elector submissions to declare “failed” elections in the challenged states and order those electors set aside on Jan. 6.

Pence declined to do so and Trump’s direction of a violent mob to the Capitol failed to further sway him or remove him from the premises so that someone else could carry out the scheme.

This whole plan failed, but the potential to repeat it remains without Electoral Count Act reforms.

An evenly split bipartisan group of 20 senators, led by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), convened to discuss reforms to the law following the collapse of Democrats’ voting rights agenda in January. They reported bill text to the public in July and the Senate Rules Committee voted in favor of an updated version to the floor in September. The House passed a version of Electoral Count Act reform in September.

In a sign of broad bipartisan support, 16 Republicans, including Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), co-sponsored it. The bill has received support from across the ideological spectrum, from the liberal Center for American Progress to the conservative magazine National Review. 

With Republicans coming into power in the House in January, the only hope to pass Electoral Count Act reform is during the waning days of the lame-duck 117th Congress.

The entire incoming House GOP leadership voted to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat and steal the election. When the House voted on Electoral Count Act reform, only nine Republican members voted yes.