为立法工作了数月的广泛的两党参议员团体改革19世纪的法律管理选举团程序和总统选举后的计票在周二取得了两项重大胜利。
首先，肯塔基州的参议院共和党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔(Mitch McConnell)对他们的法案给予了有影响力的支持，然后参议院规则委员会的每个成员——除了得克萨斯州的特德·克鲁兹——投票将该法案提交给议会审议。
“我强烈支持我们工作组的同事经过几个月的详细讨论后所作的适度修改。麦康奈尔在一次发言中宣布，我将自豪地支持这项立法，前提是对其现有形式只做技术上的改变，“麦康奈尔反复称对现行法律的改变是“常识”和“适度的”。
规则小组周二召开了一次罕见的会议，正式审议由缅因州共和党参议员苏珊·科林斯和西弗吉尼亚州民主党参议员乔·曼钦(Joe Manchin)以及其他18名参议员起草的《选举计票改革法案》(ECRA)，对该法案进行了一些修改，立法者希望这将有助于确保各州、国会和未来的副总统永远不会推翻总统选举结果。
这项立法解决了1887年《选举计票法》中一些明显的漏洞和程序上的模糊之处，该法规定了如何每四年计算一次总统选举人。
众议院1月6日的委员会表示，这部法律是时任总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)努力推翻他在2020年被乔·拜登(Joe Biden)击败的主要焦点。特朗普及其盟友希望他的副总统迈克·彭斯拒绝为拜登选举人，并劫持历史上监督各州选举人票认证的礼仪角色。
ECRA规定副总统在认证中的角色是礼仪性的。
该法案将大幅增加质疑一个州选举结果所需的国会反对者的数量，从两院各有一名议员增加到20%。
根据1月6日的委员会，ECRA还将澄清，各州不得在选举日之后选择选举人，特朗普及其盟友试图这样做，但没有成功;立法将规定如果向国会提交备用选举人名单会发生什么，1月6日的委员会表示，这是特朗普扭转败局的另一个因素。
“这些条款……将达成强有力的两党共识，我们应该为这项法案感到自豪，”参议院规则委员会主席、明尼苏达州民主党人艾米·克洛布查尔(Amy Klobuchar)在该委员会首席共和党人、前密苏里州国务卿罗伊·布朗特(Roy Blunt)旁边说。两人共同努力，对柯林斯-曼钦法案进行了一些额外的修改，并于周二获得批准。
最初的ECRA提案触及了19世纪法律的一项条款，该条款可被一个州用来宣布“选举失败”相反，只有在特殊和灾难性的情况下，才允许一个州修改其选举期限。但是Klobuchar和Blunt在他们的修正中走得更远。
根据新批准的立法，“选举失败”条款只有在“异常和灾难性的不可抗力事件”时才会触发。Klobuchar和Blunt在一份声明中说，这将“确保只有不可预见的紧急情况才会触发延长的选举，并防止出于政治原因恶意利用延长的选举条款。虽然原始法案是对现行《选举计数法》中“选举失败”条款的重大改进，但这一澄清提供了重要的保障，防止有人试图操纵这些条款，同时确保各州有应对真正紧急情况的灵活性。”
根据立法者的声明，Klobuchar-Blunt的变化还将“通过澄清一旦该州的选举获得认证，每个州的州长必须‘立即’向国会和美国档案局转交选举人证书，以防止选举认证的进一步拖延”。
周二并不是所有人都同意。
“这个法案是一个坏法案。这是一个糟糕的法案，糟糕的法律，给民主带来了严重的问题，”委员会成员、宪法律师克鲁兹在周二的听证会上说。“这是异常糟糕的政策……这项法案完全是关于唐纳德·j·特朗普的。”
克鲁兹认为ECRA“加强了选举的联邦化”，并补充说，“我不明白为什么共和党人支持它。”
但周二显示的两党支持表明，今年晚些时候上议院处理这项立法时，共和党的票数可能会很高。
弗吉尼亚州民主党参议员马克·华纳(Mark Warner)是情报委员会主席，也是选举改革工作小组的成员，他说，他希望立法者考虑未来的变化，将网络安全事件考虑在内。
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attends a Senate Rules and Administration Committee meeting on the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 27, 2022.
J.斯科特·阿普尔怀特/美联社
近几十年来，两党都试图——主要是通过象征性的反对和议员的讲话——利用美国晦涩难懂的联邦选举法来为党派利益服务，这通常是一个简单的、很少受到关注的仪式，是美国和平权力转移的核心。
周二委员会通过的立法旨在关闭其中的一部分。
房子上周投票否决了自己的改革法案有九名共和党人支持它，他们中没有人会在选择退休或输掉初选后参加11月的投票。
在周二投票支持该法案的规则委员会的七名共和党参议员中，只有两名-阿拉巴马州的布朗特和理查·谢尔比-将退休。参议员辛迪·海德·史密斯(Cindy Hyde Smith)也在委员会中支持该提案，他是共和党反对拜登在2021年1月6日获胜的人之一。
麦康奈尔周二明确表示，众议院的法案在参议院不会有任何进展。
“很明显，只有来自参议院的两党妥协才能成为法律，”他在委员会会议上说。“我们只有一次机会来解决这个问题。”
预计立法者将在11月中期选举结束后的跛脚鸭会议上处理这项立法。
McConnell and Republicans back Senate's post-Jan. 6 election reform bill
A broad bipartisan group of senators who worked for months on legislationto reform the nineteenth-century lawgoverning the Electoral College process and counting of votes after presidential elections scored two major victories on Tuesday.
First, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky threw his influential support behind their bill and then every member of the Senate Rules Committee -- except Texas' Ted Cruz -- voted to send it to the floor for consideration.
"I strongly support the modest changes that our colleagues in the working group have fleshed out after literally months of detailed discussions. I will proudly support the legislation, provided that nothing more than technical changes are made to its current form," McConnell announced in a floor speech, repeatedly calling the changes to current law "common sense" and "modest."
The rules panel -- meeting in a rare session on Tuesday to formally consider the proposed Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA) authored by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., along with 18 other senators -- made a handful of changes to the bill that lawmakers hope will help ensure states, Congress and future vice presidents can never overturn presidential election results.
The legislation addresses a number of apparent loopholes and procedural vagueness in the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which prescribes how presidential electors are counted every four years.
The law was a major focus of then-President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, the House's Jan. 6 committee has said. Trump and his allies wanted his vice president, Mike Pence, to reject the electors for Biden and hijack what is historically a ceremonial role in overseeing the certifying of each state's slate of electoral votes.
The ECRA specifies the vice president's role in the certification is ceremonial.
The bill would dramatically raise the number of congressional objectors required to challenge a state's election results -- up from one lawmaker in each chamber to 20% of members in both the House and Senate.
The ECRA would also clarify that states may not select electors after Election Day, as Trump and his allies sought unsuccessfully to do, according to the Jan. 6 committee; and the legislation would dictate what happens if an alternate slate of electors is presented to Congress, which the Jan. 6 committee has said was another element of Trump's push to reverse his loss.
"These are provisions … that will achieve a strong bipartisan consensus, and we should be very proud of this bill," Senate Rules Committee Chair Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said alongside the panel's top Republican, Roy Blunt, a former Missouri secretary of state. The pair worked together to craft some additional changes to the Collins-Manchin bill that were approved Tuesday.
The original ECRA proposal struck a provision of the 19th-century law that could be used by a state to declare a "failed election." Instead, a state would have been permitted to modify the period of its elections only in the event of extraordinary and catastrophic circumstances. But Klobuchar and Blunt went further in their revisions.
The "failed election" provision would only be triggered by "force majeure events that are extraordinary and catastrophic," according to the newly approved legislation. Klobuchar and Blunt said in a statement that this would "ensure that only unforeseen emergencies trigger extended elections and guard against bad faith exploitation of the extended election provision for political reasons. While the original bill is a significant improvement on the 'failed election' provision in the current Electoral Count Act, this clarification provides an important safeguard against political gamesmanship through attempts to manipulate these provisions while ensuring states have flexibility to respond to genuine emergencies."
The Klobuchar-Blunt changes would also "prevent further delay in certification of elections by clarifying that each state governor must 'immediately' transmit a certificate of electors to Congress and the Archivist of the United States once the state's election is certified," according to the lawmakers' statement.
Not everyone was in agreement Tuesday.
"This bill is a bad bill. It's a bad bill, bad law and poses serious problems for democracy," Sen. Cruz, a committee member and constitutional lawyer, said during Tuesday's hearing. "It's exceptionally bad policy … This bill is all about Donald J. Trump."
Cruz argued the ECRA "enhanced the federalization of elections" and added, "I do not understand why Republicans support it."
But the bipartisan backing shown Tuesday points to a likely high GOP vote count when the upper chamber deals with the legislation later this year.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the intelligence committee and was part of the election reform working group, said he hopes lawmakers will consider future changes that take into account cybersecurity events.
Both parties have, in recent decades, sought -- largely through symbolic objections and speeches from lawmakers -- to use the country's arcane federal election law to partisan advantage in what is usually a simple, barely noticed ceremony at the heart of a peaceful transfer of power in the U.S.
The legislation approved in committee on Tuesday is designed to close the door on some of that.
The Housevoted out its own reform bill last weekwith nine Republicans supporting it, none of whom will be on the ballot in November after either choosing to retire or losing their primaries.
Of the seven Republican senators on the rules committee who voted for the bill Tuesday, only two -- Blunt and Richard Shelby of Alabama -- are retiring. Sen. Cindy Hyde Smith, who also backed the proposal in committee, was one of the GOP objectors to the certification of Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021.
McConnell made clear Tuesday that the House bill would go nowhere in the Senate.
"It's clear that only a bipartisan compromise originating in the Senate can become law," he said at the committee meeting. "We have one shot to get this right."
Lawmakers are expected to deal with the legislation when they return from the November midterm elections in a lame-duck session.
