CNN:
Members of the January 6 committee are working on potential legislation to tighten the process of certifying a presidential election in an effort to eliminate contentious avenues that spurred the January 6 riot, sources tell CNN.
The legislation would give the committee a focus on developing a law as part of the investigation, undercutting a legal argument that former President Donald Trump has made that the committee has no true legislative purpose for seeking his White House documents.The effort is still in its early stages, but a proposed bill could offer more specific instructions for when Congress can overturn a state’s slate of electors, and more clearly define the role the vice president plays in counting the votes — after Trump and his allies pressured Mike Pence to try to block President Joe Biden’s win, the sources say.
Specifically, members are focused on making changes to a 19th Century law known as the Electoral Count Act that was intended to give Congress a process by which to certify the Electoral College votes submitted by the states. It’s a mundane but crucial part of the presidential election machinery, one that Trump and his allies attempted to exploit last year….
Edward Foley, an election law professor at Ohio State University, has urged Congress to update the Electoral Count Act since before the 2020 election. He’s argued that the law should make it clearer that after a state properly affirms its slate of electors, Congress shouldn’t be able to easily intervene to throw them out.Had the House and Senate supported the objections — if one party controlled both chambers of Congress and the other party had won the White House, for instance — it could have thrown out the electors and pushed the presidential election to the House, creating the potential for a constitutional crisis.
“In 2025, this kind of power grab and repudiation of the constitutional procedure could make a difference if the votes are there,” Foley told CNN.
Foley added: “What we’ve been through this year is evidence we need to fix it before next time.”