Trump vindicated?
QUICK FACTS:
- A group of senators led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) revealed legislation Wednesday to change “archaic and ambiguous” election laws after President Donald Trump’s legal team argued the results of the 2020 presidential election were fraudulent.
- In Jan 2020, Trump had claimed that then-Vice President Mike Pence did have the power to overturn the allegedly fraudulent election results. VP Pence “can decertify the results or send them back to the states for change and certification,” Trump said. “He can also decertify the illegal and corrupt results and send them to the House of Representatives for the one vote for one state tabulation.”
- At the time, mainstream media insisted Trump was wrong about Pence having the power to overturn the election results.
- On Jan 5, The Associated Press ran a headline titled, “Trump insists, falsely, that Pence can decertify results.” That same article was published on ABC, NBC, Yahoo! News, and even conservative news outlets Breitbart and Fox, spreading the notion that Trump’s claim about Pence’s power to overturn the election was wrong.
- But one of the senators’ new bills, called the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, specifies that the role of the vice president in certifying election results is “solely ministerial,” with no authority to “solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate” the outcome, apparently proving Trump right.
WHAT ELSE THE BILLS DO:
- The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act removes language from 1845 which allowed state legislatures to override the results of the popular vote. The bill also makes it more difficult for Congress to object to a state’s electors, necessitating the support of at least one-fifth of the House and Senate.
- The other bill, called the Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act, doubles jail time for intimidating election officials, voters, or candidates from one to two years and recommends raising the maximum penalty for election records tampering from $1,000 to $10,000.
BACKGROUND:
- Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has said that “ambiguities” in the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs the counting and the certification of the presidential vote, were “exploited” on Jan 6, and that lawmakers “need to prevent that from happening again.”
- Trump responded, “If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?”
