Congress eyes strongest response yet to Jan. 6 attack
WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives is voting this week on changes to a 19th century law for certifying presidential elections, in response to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
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.
Former President Donald Trump and his allies tried to exploit the law’s vague language in the weeks after the election, including by lobbying Vice President Mike Pence to simply object to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory when Congress counted the votes 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, with the ultimately unsuccessful idea that they could be voted on during the certification 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.
While the House vote is expected to fall mostly along party lines, the Senate bill has some Republican support and its backers are hopeful they will have the 10 votes they need to break a filibuster and pass it in the 50-50 Senate.
The Senate Rules panel is expected to pass the measure next Tuesday, with some tweaks, though a floor vote will most likely wait until November or December, Klobuchar said.
Even though they are similar, the House version is more expansive than the Senate bill and the two chambers will have some key differences that lawmakers will have to work out. The House legislation was introduced on Monday by House Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, both members of the House panel that has been investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Like the Senate bill, the House legislation would require that there is a single set of electors from each state submitted by the governor. The House bill would also narrow the grounds on which members of Congress could object to any state's electoral votes and raise the threshold for how many objections would be needed. Currently, the House and Senate each debate and vote on whether to accept a state's electors if there is just one objection from each chamber.
The House bill would require instead that a third of the House and a third of the Senate object to a particular state's electors in order to hold a vote. The Senate bill would require that a fifth of each chamber object.
The general similarities of the House bill to the Senate version could be a signal that House members are willing to compromise to get the legislation passed. Some House members had criticized the Senate bill for not going far enough. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of both the Jan. 6 and House Administration committees, had said this summer that the Senate bill was not “remotely sufficient” to address the challenges presented by current law.
House members know they will have to give in some, though, to pass it through the 50-50 Senate. The bill, which is sponsored by centrist Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., and Susan Collins, R-Maine., already has the backing from 10 GOP senators.
Collins said Monday, “I believe we can work this out, and I hope that we do so.”
The bipartisan group of senators worked for months to find agreement on a way to revamp the process, eventually settling on a series of proposals introduced in July.
Cheney, a frequent Trump critic who lost her Republican primary in August, told reporters on Tuesday that the House bill was “entirely bipartisan” as her staff worked closely with Lofgren and other Democrats.
"We need to take steps that another Jan 6 never happens again," Cheney said.
