… in order to own the libs
Greg Sargent has the story. You’ll enjoy the Republicans’ rationale for supporting it. It’s hilarious:
The omnibus spending bill has been released, and buried inside it are provisions that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how Congress counts presidential electors. Trump’s effort to subvert his presidential reelection loss exploited many weaknesses in the ECA that would be fixed if the omnibus passes, as expected.
Strikingly, all this is happening with little noise from right-wing media or MAGA-loyal lawmakers. A bipartisan group of senators negotiated these reforms for months with the support of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and they will likely be backed by many or even most GOP senators. Trump himself has been surprisingly mute.
Yet the fact remains: GOP senators who support these ECA reforms are implicitly acknowledging the ugliest realities of what Trump attempted in 2020. They are acknowledging the true nature of the threat that Trump or an imitator might pose in 2024.
Just about every main ECA reform in the omnibus responds directly to what Trump did. It would clarify that the vice president’s role in counting electors is ceremonial. (Trump pressured his vice president to halt the count.) It would raise the threshold for Congress to nullify legitimate electors. (Trump got dozens of Republicans to object to Joe Biden’s electors.)
Reform would also combat state-level subversion. Trump pressured GOP state legislators to appoint sham electors for himself, so reform would essentially require governors to certify electors in keeping with state popular vote outcomes. It would create new avenues to legally challenge fraudulent electors and require Congress to count electors that are validated by the courts.
It is often said that reformers must avoid fighting the last war. But these reforms also fight the next one. If a GOP state legislature appoints a losing candidate’s electors in 2024, and the GOP-controlled House counts them, under current law that could produce a stolen election or serious crisis. ECA reform will make that much harder to pull off. MSNBC’s Ari Melber has described the need to legislatively “Trump-proof” our system, and here the description is apt.
Why is all this happening? One reason: This is an easy way for Republicans to do something about the Trump threat. It’s highly technical and doesn’t require direct condemnation of Trump himself. Attaching reform to the omnibus avoids a stand-alone vote on it, which could subject Republicans supporting it to more attacks.
Republicans also have a way to explain it to voters. In a key tell, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued in the Louisville Courier Journal this week that reform would disarm the secret liberal plot to dismantle the electoral college, which would be easier to do (he claimed) if liberals can show the electoral count is prone to exploitation.
In short, Republicans can argue that ECA reform will Own The Libs. Similarly, in coming days you will hear Republicans insist that it will prevent Vice President Harris from subverting the next electoral count and helping steal the 2024 election from Republicans.
They’re so cute. I’m sure their more educated voters see through this and just don’t care because they know J6 was so messy and unpopular so whatever their leaders need to say to keep the rubes from getting riled up is a-ok with them. But it’s nonsense, of course. They know there is a possibility that Trump or another of their MAGA nuts might try something like this again and they know it’s not good for the party so they’re selling it as a way to control Democrats — who’ve never done anything like this and likely never would because their constituency isn’t that stupid. I guess if they’ve got Rand Paul lying in order to excuse their vote to tighten up the rules it’s good news.
I’m not saying that Dems couldn’t contest an election in the future. They’ve done it before using legal means. But the only party that’s profited from outlandish legal theories and irregular tactics to tilt elections their way is the Republican Party, They got the Supreme Court to intervene on their behalf in 2000 and staged an insurrection in 2020.
But don’t worry, if they want to do something like it again, they’ll figure out a way. They have a battalion of lawyers working on new and innovative ways to destroy the democratic process all the time. If it’s close they’ll do whatever is necessary — and it will be much easier in the future since Trump has brainwashed half the Republican Party into believing that Democrats do it all the time.
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