Reforming The Electoral Count Act Does Not Address The Democracy Crisis Facing Our Nation

FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE  |  February 3, 2022

Following the defeat last month of the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, essential voting rights legislation, by a vote of 52-to-48, a small bipartisan group of Senators turned their focus to repairing the Electoral Count Act of 1877 (ECA).

This effort to develop ECA reforms is being led by Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and Susan Collins (R-ME), three Senators who played key roles in killing the voting rights legislation.

The ECA lays out the rules for the counting of presidential electoral votes and the certification of presidential electors once the election takes place. The law was passed following the disputed 1876 election of President Rutherford B. Hayes and is in need of repair.

While the ECA needs to be reformed, it is important to recognize that it has zero impact on the more than 465 House and Senate elections held each election cycle.

And, the ECA in no way addresses the urgent need to override the wave of state voter suppression laws or to combat the election sabotage laws enacted by GOP-controlled state legislatures in 2021. Those laws are a grave threat to our democracy – with more such laws expected to be enacted in 2022.

These voter suppression and election sabotage laws could, by themselves, determine the outcome of future presidential elections, before we even get to any issues regarding the counting of electoral votes.

Repairing the language of the Electoral Count Act simply would not address the democracy crisis facing our nation as a result of the widespread attacks on voting rights and the empowering of partisan officials to rig federal elections.

In response to this new Senate effort, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 230 national organizations, and 53 individual groups, including Democracy 21, wrote yesterday to thank Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his leadership on critical voting rights reforms and to urge Senator Schumer and Members of Congress who supported voting rights legislation to ensure that voting rights reforms are included with any effort to reform the ECA.

According to the letter, “The conversations regarding reforms to the Electoral Count Act (ECA) are needed and welcome, but they simply are not adequate to meet the current moment. […] [W]e must ensure that any revised legislation also includes components of the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act that are necessary to address the problems faced by eligible voters in their attempts to cast votes and have those votes counted.”

President Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election is becoming clearer by the day.

The House Jan. 6 Committee is building a powerful case that authoritarian Trump and his allies attempted a political coup to steal the presidency. They were stopped by Democratic and Republican state and local officials and by judges, all loyal to our democracy and Constitution.

But, the impact of Trump’s Big Lie didn’t end on January 6. It continues today as Republican state legislatures have enacted – and continue to enact – voter suppression laws and election sabotage measures to rig and steal federal elections, beginning with this year’s midterms.

The bottom line is this: While the Electoral Count Act needs to be repaired, fundamental voting rights reforms are essential to preserve our democracy and must be part of any such repair.

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Fred’s Weekly Note appears each Thursday in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter here. Or, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.