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electoral count act
Raskin Says Electoral College Is a 'Danger' to Democracy and Should Be Abandoned
"We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else: Whoever gets the most votes wins."
Dec 26, 2022
Rep. Jamie Raskin, soon to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said Sunday that the Electoral College is a "danger" to U.S. democracy and should be abandoned in favor of presidential elections decided by the popular vote.
"The Electoral College now, which has given us five popular vote losers as president in our history, twice in this century alone, has become a danger, not just to democracy, but to the American people," Raskin (D-Md.) said in an appearance on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "It was a danger on January 6. There are so many curving byways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief."
"We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else: Whoever gets the most votes wins," added Raskin, who served on the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Axiosreported earlier this year that some members of the January 6 panel wanted "big changes on voting rights—and even to abolish the Electoral College—while others are resisting proposals to overhaul the U.S. election system."
In its final report, the House committee stopped short of calling for the abolition of the Electoral College, something progressives have demanded for years.
\u201cHouse January 6th Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin says that passing Electoral Count Act reform \u201cdoesn\u2019t solve the fundamental problem.\u201d\n\n\u201cI'm for that, and that's the very least we can do and we must do. It's necessary, but it's not remotely sufficient.\u201d\u201d— Face The Nation (@Face The Nation) 1671982522
The Maryland Democrat's comments came days after Congress approved reforms to the Electoral Count Act, an obscure 1887 law that governs the tallying of Electoral College votes.
"For years, legal scholars have worried the law was poorly written and in need of clarification, and former President Donald Trump and his allies targeted the law's ambiguities in their attempts to overturn the 2020 election," NPR noted last week. "In the time after voting ended in 2020and results were certified, Trump and his team argued that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to interfere with the counting of electoral votes because the law as it currently stands names the vice president as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress where those votes are counted."
"The update passed by the Senate would clarify that the vice president's role in the proceedings is purely ceremonial," the outlet explained. "Importantly, the measure also would raise the bar for objecting to a state's slate of electors. As it stands now, it takes just one member of the House and one senator to challenge a state's electors and send both chambers into a potentially days-long debate period, even without legitimate concerns."
While welcoming the newly passed reforms, Raskin said Sunday that they won't "solve the fundamental problem."
"We know that the Electoral College doesn't fit anymore, which is why I'm a big supporter of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, where it's bubbling up from below," Raskin continued. "There are now 15 or 16 states and the District of Columbia who've said, 'We're going to cast our electors for the winner of the national vote once we get 270 electors in our coalition.'"
The compact—which has the goal of guaranteeing the presidency to "the candidate who receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and the District of Columbia"—has thus far been backed by 16 U.S. jurisdictions with a total of 195 electoral votes.
Last week, Florida State Rep. Michael Gottlieb—a Democrat—filed legislation that would make the Sunshine State the latest to join the compact. The bill is expected to face opposition from Republicans in the state, including Gov. Ron DeSantis—a possible 2024 presidential candidate.
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Electoral Count Act Reform Is Welcome—But Much More Is Needed to Save US Democracy
Trump did not start the myth of voter fraud—that has been a partisan staple for two decades now.
Dec 26, 2022
Congress has approved a budget that includes essential reforms to the Electoral Count Act. The updates, which have broad bipartisan support, eliminate ambiguities in the electoral count process that former President Trump and his allies seized on as they tried to overturn the 2020 election. Anyone looking to undermine future election results will have fewer options, and that is a victory for our democracy.
The passage comes on the heels of the January 6 committee’s release of its full report. The panel made news by making four criminal referrals for the former president. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of all people, put it well in response: “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day.”
In the wake of the committee’s extraordinary work, an important remaining question is not who caused the insurrection but rather what caused the insurrection.
First, let’s take a moment to appreciate the panel’s achievement. It made clear through riveting hearings and careful leaks that this was not just a rally that got out of control but a vigorously pursued plot to overthrow American democracy. The committee documented extraordinary crimes. We thought we knew it all, but it was gripping.
Such congressional investigations once regularly commanded headlines. The most famously effective was the Senate Watergate committee in 1973. That — together with the Church Committee, which exposed wrongdoing by the FBI and CIA — dominated the news but also led to reforms, from the federal campaign finance laws to the establishment of the joint congressional intelligence committee.
Reform sometimes follows scandal. And there has been no greater scandal than Donald Trump’s effort to block the peaceful transfer of power.
But putting the blame squarely and exclusively on Donald Trump is not enough to protect our democracy. Trump did not start the myth of voter fraud — that has been a partisan staple for two decades now. His attempt to subvert the 2020 election exposed vulnerabilities in our legal and electoral systems. Most of them remain, waiting for a second Donald Trump to come along and exploit them again. Those weaknesses are what caused the January 6 insurrection. The committee’s work could have even longer-lasting benefits if its revelations help spur reform.
It starts with fixing the Electoral Count Act. Trump’s loony reading of the creaky and outdated 19th-century law provided the foundation for his pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence. The newly passed reform makes clear that vice presidents have a merely ministerial role and makes it harder for members of Congress to object to duly cast electoral votes. These changes cement that the reading of the electoral votes is a ceremony, nothing more. They and other important fixes to the Electoral Count Act are included in the budget bill.
That bill also includes federal funding to upgrade election infrastructure and keep election officials safe, though not nearly enough. We should never forget that Trump’s pressure campaign did not stop with Pence. Trump personally called state election officials, urging them — without any cogent rationale — to overturn his defeat. Trump’s counsel, Rudy Giuliani, falsely accused local election workers of fraud. As a result of Trump’s campaign against these public servants, election workers in several states were harassed, threatened, and chased from their homes. Going forward, Congress must act decisively to protect election officials in their homes and in their offices, providing a reliable source of funding for much-needed security.
Other changes will require sustained pressure from the American people. National baseline standards for federal elections should be high on that list. For example, Trump’s team argued for the invalidation of Pennsylvania’s slate of electors, on the theory that state officials should not have complied with a state supreme court ruling requiring them to count mail votes received several days after the election but postmarked by Election Day. A spurious argument, but the silence of federal law on when and how mail ballots should be counted gave it unnecessary fuel. With 50 states conducting the election with almost 50 different procedures, close elections will lead to similar claims in the future.
The Constitution unquestionably gives Congress the power to fix this problem. With every state playing by the same rules, there would be less room for allegations of impropriety.
These are just the beginning of the necessary reforms. There should be guaranteed funding for states to conduct reliable post-election audits. Congress should fund state efforts to combat election-related disinformation and restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act to prevent racial discrimination in voting — Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election primarily targeted voters of color. The list goes on.
The January 6 committee performed a vital service. It left us with indelible images. But now that its work is over, focusing solely on Trump himself would be a major mistake. Mending weak points in our election system should be a bipartisan priority. It starts with the Electoral Count Act, but I hope it will not end there.
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Civil Rights Groups Reject Electoral Count Act as a 'Charade'
"Some might view this effort as a cynical attempt to fool the American people into believing meaningful action has been taken on voting rights when none has been taken," the organizations said.
Jan 31, 2022
Amid continued GOP obstruction of Democrats' voting rights legislation, a coalition of civil rights groups on Monday issued a joint statement pushing back against a bipartisan plan to reform the Electoral Count Act, calling the proposal woefully insufficient to address nationwide voter suppression efforts.
"Bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake does nothing for a citizen whose right to vote has been compromised by partisan extremists in states."
The core of the issue, the groups said, is that the plan to tweak the law, while offering some "important and needed protections to ensure the integrity of the presidential election of 2024," simply "does not address the ongoing pernicious and pervasive racial discrimination in voting nor does it make voting more accessible."
Issued by organizations including the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the NAACP, the statement calls pursuit of the bipartisan plan alone--without passage of the more sweeping John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act--"offensive to voters, especially voters of color, and the generations who bled and died for the franchise since our nation's founding."
"Bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake does nothing for a citizen whose right to vote has been compromised by partisan extremists in states," they continued. "Worse, some might view this effort as a cynical attempt to fool the American people into believing meaningful action has been taken on voting rights when none has been taken. We won't participate in that charade."
"Compromise is a worthy goal, but any compromise on voting rights must center on tearing down barriers to the ballot for Black people and other people of color, Native Americans and Alaskan Natives, people with disabilities, senior citizens, veterans, new Americans, and young people," the groups stated, and warned the nation's "democracy remains on the line."
The statement further calls on Congress to "include the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and key provisions of the Freedom to Vote Act in any legislation that is considered to safeguard our democracy."
Earlier this month, the plan to enact reforms to the Electoral Count Act also elicited concerns from progressives, especially as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) expressed openness to the proposal and since the bipartisan group of senators involved in the effort includes Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who joined with Republicans to block the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.
As Politicoreported last week:
While tackling the outdated Electoral Count Act is popular among scholars after Republicans challenged the election results last year and a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, both parties have used the arcane text to force votes on election certifications. The upper-chamber negotiators are now aiming to make it harder for senators to object to those certifications, and to clarify that the vice president cannot unilaterally overturn the election...
Before the group developed, most Democrats had dismissed the more narrow electoral discussions that took off in recent weeks, trying to downplay them as a politically motivated off-ramp for Republicans to avoid blame ahead of the failed vote on a Senate rules change.
In a letter to senators earlier this month, the advocacy group Common Cause said that looking at changes to the Electoral Count Act and legislative proposals to tackle voter suppression as an either-or scenario represents "a false choice."
"Reforms to how the score is counted will not unrig the rules that are stacked against voters and their participation," the group said.
In a statement, Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn expressed concern that "voting rights in states across the country are under siege as legislators write and pass a new generation of Jim Crow laws to determine who can and cannot vote."
"The Electoral Count Act does in fact need fixing," she said, "but first the Senate must pass legislation to protect the voting rights of every American--particularly Black and Brown Americans targeted by the wave of 21st Century Jim Crow laws being passed in the states."
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