Reform of the Electoral Count Act is one of the most important things Congress can do to reduce the risk of electoral subversion of the 2024 presidential election. Along with other election law experts, I’ve been urging reform of the ECA since the 2020 election, as in this NYT essay. But until now, ECA reform has taken a back seat in Congress to other voting issues.

ECA reform, though, might be capable of attracting bipartisan support in the Senate. That’s why this editorial from The National Review is important, along with the earlier piece from Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsburg urging ECA reform. From the National Review editorial:

Congress should respond, as it did after 1876, by shoring up and clarifying the process for resolving presidential elections with disputed outcomes. That will require the votes of Senate Republicans, who should support reforming the Electoral Count Act as a matter of both good policy and political self-interest.

There are fair debates over what a revised Electoral Count Act should look like. At a minimum, it should make explicit and undeniable that (1) the vice president does not decide which electoral votes to count; and (2) states that hold popular votes to choose electors cannot later attempt to have their legislatures select their own electors. There is also a strong case for requiring more than a single senator to object to a state’s electors in order to trigger a vote, for requiring more than a majority vote of each house to throw out a certified slate of electors, and for clarifying that Congress is not the place to relitigate any challenge that was, or could have been, raised in the courts or in state election-contest proceedings.

Democrats, for all their public hand-wringing over January 6 and Trump’s election contest, have been slow to focus on Electoral Count Act reform, preferring instead to push their pet proposals for sweeping new federal controls on voting, elections, redistricting, and political speech. Republicans are right to resist any effort to tie Electoral Count Act reform to any of those proposals.

Senate Democrats, however, have recently been getting more serious about revising the Electoral Count Act. By participating in that process, Senate Republicans can pressure them to produce a clean standalone bill and can have input to shape the revisions.