Republicans Throw a Fit Over Elections Bill Because Liz Cheney Was Involved - Vanity Fair

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House Democrats are expected to pass a bill to reform the Electoral Count Act, the law Trump and his allies attempted to exploit in 2020 in their scheme to overturn the election.

By Eric Lutz

September 21, 2022

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House Democrats on Wednesday are expected to pass a bill to reform the Electoral Count Act — the notoriously difficult-to-parse 1887 election law Donald Trump and his allies sought to exploit to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. But they’ll have to do it without much help from their GOP colleagues, who seem to object to the proposal in the lower chamber because anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney was involved in crafting it. “It’s clear that anything Liz Cheney touches is all about whacking Donald Trump and not about making meaningful changes,” Republican Study Committee Chair Jim Banks told Axios, saying that Cheney’s involvement “greatly diminishes the seriousness” of the legislation in his eyes.

“I know Liz is a Republican, but the fact is they just foist it on us,” Nebraska Republican Don Bacon added to Politico. “It’s typical [Nancy Pelosi]: Shove it down your throat.”

The House bill was drawn up by Cheney and Democrat Zoe Lofgren, who both serve on the January 6 committee, which is set to hold another public hearing later this month, and is similar to a separate bipartisan bill in the Senate. Both bills are designed to clarify the vice president’s role in the certification of presidential elections and to make it harder for lawmakers to object to electors. The idea of each is to clear up the uncertainties in the original law that Trump and his allies attempted to capitalize on in 2020, including by pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to not certify Biden’s electors on January 6, 2021; when Pence refused to go along with that plan, Trump unleashed a mob of angry, armed supporters on the Capitol to block the certification, as Cheney’s select committee detailed in public hearings over the summer.

The GOP, a large swath of which supported Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 results, has seemed more open to ECA reform than to legislation protecting voting rights or holding the former president accountable for his actions. The Senate legislation, introduced by Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Susan Collins, appears to have enough Republican support to pass the upper chamber. “I’m confident we can get this done,” Collins told the Washington Post. Ten Senate Republicans have already joined on, and some party leaders have suggested they would favor the bill even if Trump came out in explicit opposition to it. “I don’t think he gets a vote,” Texas Senator John Cornyn told the Post.

While Democrats can pass the bill on their own in the House, it’s not clear that bill will garner the same bipartisan support — and not just because of Cheney’s involvement. Though the bills are quite similar, the House version is somewhat stronger, as it would require a third of House lawmakers to object to elector count to overturn it, rather than a fifth of the body, as the Senate bill proposes. As the Post’s Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman pointed out Monday, it also provides stronger safeguards to prevent rogue governors from sending in alternative electors — a disturbing prospect that has come into clearer view as anti-democratic election deniers like Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano and Arizona’s Kari Lake vie for governor in their respective swing states. Republicans, including pro-Trump extremists like Andy Biggs and Dan Bishop, slammed the proposal. “If it comes out of a rotten process,” Bishop told Axios, “you probably ought to begin with a healthy level of skepticism.” But the House bill’s supporters suggest they aren’t trying to undercut the bipartisan Senate bill. “We’re not disrupting the compromise,” a House aide told CNN. “We think we are raising the floor for what this bill should look like.”

How the final legislation will ultimately look — and when and if it will pass — remain to be seen for now. But it’s vital that Democrats, and any Republicans willing to join them, update the ECA while they can. Two years ago, Trump came dangerously close to abusing the law’s uncertainties to overturn a free and fair election. Without reform, there’s no guarantee that he or some other bad actor won’t succeed in doing so next time around. “Our proposal is intended to preserve the rule of law for all future presidential elections by ensuring that self-interested politicians cannot steal from the people the guarantee that our government derives its power from the consent of the governed,” Cheney and Lofgren wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Sunday. “We look forward to working with our colleagues in the House and the Senate toward this goal.”