Dem Senators Unveil Plan to Make It Nearly Impossible for Senators, VP to Challenge Election Results
Two Democratic senators and a Democrat-aligned colleague are using the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion as a pretext to change the 1887 Electoral Count Act to essentially squelch challenges to election results.
This is ironic because many Democrats — including two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California — repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency throughout his tenure.
In fact, Waters and a handful of other Democrats objected to the certification of Trump’s Electoral College win on the floor of Congress in January 2017.
Over the past two decades, Democrats objected to the validity of electoral votes on three separate occasions when a Republican was elected president.
But now that a Democrat has been installed in the White House, the self-proclaimed “party of inclusion” apparently cannot stomach dissent.
Sen. Angus King of Maine — an independent who caucuses with Democrats — unveiled a proposal called the Electoral Count Modernization Act that would update the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
According to a news release Tuesday, King is pushing the legislation in collaboration with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Dick Durbin of Illinois.
King apparently introduced the bill in reaction to the millions of Trump supporters who believe that voter fraud played a role in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and whose protests led up to the Capitol incursion on the day electoral votes were certified.
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“In response to the threats to our democracy since the 2020 Presidential election, this legislation seeks to establish clear, consistent, and fair procedures for the counting and certification of electoral votes for the presidency,” King said in a statement.
The proposed bill would do the following:
- Clarify that the vice president has no power to reject a state’s electors.
- Narrow the grounds for objections to electors or electoral votes.
- Raise the thresholds for Congress to consider objections and make it harder to sustain objections.
- Ensure that state legislatures cannot appoint electors after Election Day in an effort to overturn their state’s election results.
- Provide limited judicial review to ensure that the electors appointed by a state reflect the popular vote results in the state.
- Give states additional time (until Dec. 20) to complete legitimate recounts and litigation.
The current law requires only one member of the House and one member of the Senate to object to the electoral count before it’s moved to a floor vote in the chamber.
The proposed legislation would require one-third of the Senate to object before the objection could be moved to a floor vote.
Ironically, Democrats are doing this at the same time that they’re hypocritically agitating to end the filibuster so they can pass radical laws that would erode election integrity.
After spending years screeching that Trump’s 2016 election victory was “rigged,” Democrats now want to quash dissent when Republicans raise questions about the 2020 election.
History has repeatedly shown that demonizing and silencing your political opponents is the hallmark of brutal authoritarian regimes. Don’t be surprised if that’s how this era is viewed years from now.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
