In the final weeks of Congress’s last session before Republicans take control of the House, Democratic lawmakers are planning to push a number of bills forward — including legislation that aims to prevent attempted usurpations of future presidential elections in wake of Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election after he lost to President Joe Biden.
According to Politico, Democrats seem eager to pass an update to the Electoral Count Act, which would modify ambiguities in current election law that Trump attempted to exploit to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcome. In order to pass such legislation, however, Democrats may have to attach it to other spending bills.
On January 6, 2021, prior to the attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of his loyalists, Trump sought to have then-Vice President Mike Pence rule that electors from states Biden had narrowly won were improperly selected, despite the fact that the vice president doesn’t have the power to issue such a ruling.
The new bill would solidify that such powers aren’t granted to the vice president. It would also create a higher threshold for members of Congress to contest electors’ votes. (Currently, only one member of each house is needed to initiate a challenge.)
But with little time to negotiate the bill, Democrats (as well as a handful of Republicans who support such reforms) will have to look at other options to pass the legislation into law — including possibly attaching the reforms to other appropriations bills, such as the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
It’s unlikely that a standalone bill on updates to the Electoral College, which has already passed in the House, could pass on its own in the Senate, as it’s unclear whether Democrats could find the 10 Republican votes necessary to avoid a filibuster block of the legislation. Attaching the legislation to another bill poses certain political risks, but appears to be the best option to ensure the reforms can be passed.
Polling from September shows that a majority of American voters want Congress to pass a bill to subvert future attempts at overturning presidential election results, with voters supporting such legislation by a two to one margin (52 percent versus 26 percent).
But other polling data shows that an even higher proportion of voters support eliminating the Electoral College altogether and replacing it with a popular vote model.
A report from Pew Research Center in August found that 63 percent of Americans favor replacing the Electoral College with a version of a popular vote mechanism, while just 35 percent of Americans want to keep the Electoral College in place.
The rate of support for ending the Electoral College is the highest seen in decades, according to Pew’s numbers.
Notably, Trump won the presidency in 2016 through the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote to then-Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton. For about a week after his victory, Trump, who had previously expressed misgivings about the Electoral College, said he was still supportive of getting rid of the system. He changed his tune shortly after, however, and repeatedly endorsed the Electoral College throughout his presidency, likely because it was (and remains) his best shot at winning another presidential election sometime in the future, as the majority of Americans view him unfavorably.
Indeed, Biden won the 2020 Electoral College by a margin of 306 electors to Trump’s 232, and by around 7 million ballots in the popular vote count; if Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada had opted for Trump rather than Biden by just 77,405 ballots, Trump would have won the presidency for the second time, despite Biden having 7 million more votes.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.