NC’s Tillis works to end questions on vice president’s role in electoral count

Sen. Thom Tillis is among a bipartisan group of 16 lawmakers who worked on a bill that ensures the vice president’s role in certifying a presidential election is unambiguous and that the threshold for members of Congress to contest election results is more substantial.

“I think with the Electoral Count Act, in particular, we just needed some clarity,” Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, told McClatchy on Tuesday while walking through the U.S. Capitol. “I think it made sense to modernize it.”

Lawmakers began reviewing the Electoral Count Act of 1887 following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol when a group of rioters, who supported former President Donald Trump, violently broke into the building in order to stop the election certification of President Joe Biden.

Since then, the nation has learned the immense pressure Trump and a team of lawyers put on Vice President Mike Pence to throw out Biden’s electoral votes. The lawyers tried to justify to Pence doing so by pointing to vague language in the 1887 law.

Last week, lawmakers announced a bill aimed at reforming the Electoral Count Act to end any lingering misconceptions to ensure no one tries to take advantage of the law again. Other legislation introduced addresses transitions of power, election security and anti-harassment protections against election workers.

The 16 senators put out a joint statement last week urging their colleagues to pass their bills.

“From the beginning, our bipartisan group has shared a vision of drafting legislation to fix the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887,” they said together. “Through numerous meetings and debates among our colleagues as well as conversations with a wide variety of election experts and legal scholars, we have developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for President and Vice President.”

The senators said in a news release that they worked with state election officials and a group of “ideologically diverse” election experts and legal scholars to draft the bill.

Some Democrats in the House don’t think the bill goes far enough to prevent subversion of elections, Politico reported. But Democrats can’t pass most legislation through the Senate without compromise, elevating the importance of Republicans like Tillis who have been willing to strike deals or find common ground.

Vice president’s role

In the new bill, the vice president’s role in certifying election results is strictly ceremonial and he or she has no power to accept, reject or determine electors.

Fact checkers across the country have interpreted the vice president’s role as only that after studying the 1887 law, but a congressional study released in January found that since the country’s inception, lawmakers have been struggling to interpret a single sentence in the U.S. Constitution.

It reads: “The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted.”

Greg Jacob, the top White House counsel to Pence, who warned the former vice president against throwing out Biden’s election results, testified before the Jan. 6 congressional committee last month about Pence’s frustration with that sentence.

Jacob recalled Pence telling him, “I can’t wait to go to heaven and meet the framers and tell them: ‘The work that you did in putting together our Constitution is a work of genius. It was divinely inspired. But there is one sentence that I would like to talk to you a little about.’”

After a number of heated electoral counts, Congress created in 1887 the Electoral Count Act to answer some of the ambiguities.

Objections to certification

The proposed reform also addresses lawmakers’ abilities to object to electors from a state. Currently it takes a single member of both the House and Senate to raise an objection. Under the new bill, one-fifth of members of both the House and Senate would need to object.

“There may have been a time where you would only have one objector when we were dispersed and that made sense, but now we’re here, so raising the threshold for the number of members from the House or the Senate that have to object for it to rise to a vote makes sense,” Tillis said.

As Congress counted the electoral votes on Jan. 6, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Paul Gosar objected to Arizona’s count and Sen. Josh Hawley and Rep. Scott Perry objected to Pennsylvania’s count. Dozens of Republican lawmakers, including seven from North Carolina, joined in one or both objections.

Reps. Jody Hice, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks and Louie Gohmert attempted objections to the counts from Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, respectively, but without a senator.

Other provisions

The Electoral Count Act reform bill would remove, from an 1845 law, permission for state legislators to override popular votes by declaring a “failed election.” The definition of a “failed election” had never been defined. The bill now says a presidential election can only be moved under “extraordinary and catastrophic circumstances.”

It also ensures that only one set of electors can be submitted by giving that responsibility to the governor of each state. The only exception would be if someone else is designated under state law or in the state’s constitution and that that was in effect on Election Day.

Groups from seven states sent the National Archives a list of “alternate electors” following the 2020 election. This bill ensures that Congress can not accept a slate of electors from any other official than the governor or the state’s legal alternative.

Transfer of power

The senators also propose that if the results of a presidential election are in doubt, both candidates will have access to federal resources to ensure a smooth transition of power.

Those resources would go to the winner once they receive the majority of electoral votes in the November election and there isn’t further legal or administrative action contesting the results, or once the candidate receives the majority of electoral votes at the meeting of electors in December, or is formally elected at the joint meeting of Congress in January.

The bill stipulates that five days after the election, if neither candidate concedes, both are entitled to federal transition resources until it is “substantially certain” who won the majority of the electoral vote. The bill also gives candidates expedited judicial review that includes a three-judge panel with direct appeal to the Supreme Court.

If neither candidate concedes, the administrator is required to report on federal resources provided to each candidate, provide weekly reports to Congress on the transition, including the status of determining a winner, and issue a public, written opinion when permitted or required under law that a single candidate is the winner and why.

Election security

Another bill introduced by the senators targets election security and protects election workers.

The bill reauthorizes an independent agency created under a 2002 law, known as the Election Assistance Commission. The agency would be required to test the cybersecurity of voting systems.

The bill creates the Election Records Protection Act to ensure the preservation of electronic election records. Anyone who steals, destroys, conceals, mutilates or alters election records faces two years in prison. The proposal also makes it illegal to tamper with a voting system.

The bill increases penalties — up to two years in prison — against anyone who threatens or intimidates election officials, poll watchers, voters and candidates.

Lastly, it provides better guidance to the states on how the U.S. Postal Service handles election mail to help the mail-in ballot process.