The House voted Wednesday to approve an election reform bill that seeks to prevent presidents from trying to overturn election results through Congress, the first vote on that effort since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol 2021 by a pro-Trump mob that sought. to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
The bill passed on a 229-203 vote, with only nine Republicans breaking ranks and joining Democrats in supporting the measure.
The Presidential Election Reform Act, authored by Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), explicitly cites the Capitol attack as a reason to amend the Election Counting Act of 1887, “to avoid other futures”. illegal efforts to nullify presidential elections and ensure future peaceful transfers of presidential power.”
“Legal challenges are not inappropriate, but Donald Trump’s refusal to comply with court rulings certainly was,” Cheney said Wednesday during House debate on the measure. “In our system of government, state elections determine who is president. Our bill does not change that. But this bill will prevent Congress from illegally electing the president himself.”
Cheney later added, “This bill is a very important and crucial bill ensure that what happened on January 6 will never happen again.”
President Donald Trump had falsely told his supporters that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to reject electoral votes already certified by states. Pence did not, and he has repeatedly stressed that the Constitution does not give the vice president that authority. But on Jan. 6, many of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol began chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” about the mistaken belief that the vice president could have prevented Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
The Presidential Election Reform Act would clearly reaffirm that the vice president has no role in validating a presidential election beyond acting as a figurehead overseeing the counting process, preventing that person from changing the results. It would also expand the threshold necessary for members of both houses to challenge a state’s results, as well as clarify the role governors play in the process. Finally, it would make clear that state legislatures cannot retroactively change election rules to alter the results.
“In Hollywood, there is always a sequel, often to a very bad movie. We’re headed for a new sequel in 2024 unless we change the 1887 Recount Act,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) told the House.
“We have to change the law. It’s old,” he added. “It has already been proven on January 6 and the coup attempt then [when people tried] use this law to install in the presidency a person who was not legitimately elected by the people of America.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the measure “a historic, bipartisan legislative action to safeguard the integrity of future presidential elections” and then raised a series of questions.
“How could anyone vote against free and fair elections, a cornerstone of our Constitution? How could anyone vote against the vision of our founders, putting power in the hands of the people? How could anyone vote against their own constituents by allowing radical politicians to break their word?
House Republicans, 139 of whom refused to certify Biden’s victory, oppose the measure, with GOP leadership pushing the base to vote against it.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said that while the bill narrows “the grounds on which the recount can be interfered with by Congress … it still allows Congress to invalidate electoral votes so that it does not fix the problem,” adding that the measure handles election counting in a “clumsy and partisan way.”
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) complained that the “bill tramples on state sovereignty while the Constitution gives states the authority to make and interpret their own state laws.”
Cheney and Lofgren are members of the bipartisan House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurgency and have made sober assessments of the risks of similar future attacks on American democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. The commission’s next hearing on January 6 is scheduled for September 28.
In a joint op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Cheney and Lofgren said there was more to come from the committee on the scope of Trump’s plans to overturn the 2020 presidential election, but they also had “the obligation to recommend legislation to ensure that this attack never happens again.” Trump, they noted, has continued to spread baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, and pro-Trump candidates in state and local elections across the country have bought into those falsehoods.
“This raises the possibility of another effort to steal a presidential election, perhaps with another attempt to corrupt Congress’s procedure for counting electoral votes,” Cheney and Lofgren wrote. They added: “Our proposal seeks to preserve the rule of law for all future presidential elections by ensuring that self-interested politicians cannot rob the people of the guarantee that our government derives its power from the consent of the governed.”
The bill passed the House Rules Committee on Tuesday on a 9-3 vote. The Biden administration supports the bill, calling it another step in “critically needed reform of the 135-year electoral count law”.
“Americans deserve greater clarity in the process by which their votes will result in the election of a president and vice president,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement Wednesday. “How [the Presidential Election Reform Act] legislative process, the Administration looks forward to working with Congress to ensure lasting reform consistent with Congress’s constitutional authority to protect voting rights, count electoral votes, and strengthen our democracy.”
Sens. Joe Manchin III (DW.Va.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have introduced legislation in the Senate, the Voter Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, which differs from the House in threshold for members of both houses. object Bipartisan support for the Senate bill is growing, with 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans co-sponsoring it as of Wednesday afternoon.
“We are pleased that bipartisan support continues to grow for these sensitive and much-needed reforms to the Election Counting Act of 1887,” Collins and Manchin said in a joint statement. “Our bill is supported by election law experts and organizations across the ideological spectrum. We will continue to work to increase bipartisan support for our legislation that would correct the flaws in this archaic and ambiguous law.”
Marianna Sotomayor and Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.