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JULY 21

**, 2022**

Meyerson on TAP

The Good, the Bad, and the Omitted in the Electoral Count Act

The bill introduced yesterday fixes many problems, but doesn't really
safeguard Americans' right to vote.

If ever there was a piece of legislation that embodied the words
"necessary but not sufficient," it's the Electoral Count Act,
which a bipartisan group of 16 senators announced yesterday that they
had agreed upon its terms and were introducing into the Senate.

The proposed act addresses much that's wrong with our Electoral
College setup, except the Electoral College itself. And the timing of
its release-on the eve of a primetime hearing telling us more about
Donald Trump's culpability for the January 6th insurrection -
appears to be a Republican attempt to upstage the hearings and its
devastating revelations.

Indeed, if the article

by rightwing columnist Henry Olsen that the

**Washington Post**put online earlier today is any indication, the right
is now arguing that it's the flaws in existing law that is the real
culprit behind January 6th. "The Electoral Count Act of 1887 was the
trigger for the tragic event that shocked the world," Olsen wrote.
Trigger? The trigger was Donald Trump; the 1887 act simply enabled him
to turn the Capitol into a potential shooting gallery. "Without the
ECA," Olsen continued, "there would have been no Jan. 6 riot."

For all the flaws in the 1887 Act, it's worth noting that no other
president had ever used its fuzzy language as a pretext for having an
armed mob storm the Capitol. For that matter, had the January 6th tally
not provided a forum for Trump to disrupt, he would likely have sent his
goons to the December 14th state certifications or even the January 20th
inaugural.

All that said, the Electoral Count Act is a completely necessary reform
of several aspects of our still fundamentally dysfunctional way of
choosing the world's most powerful person. Under its terms, the
vice-president's role at the January 6th tallying becomes explicitly
ministerial; the number of representatives and senators required to
object to a tally on January 6th is raised from one-per-house to 20
percent of the members in each house; only governors are permitted to
transmit the slate of state electors to Congress, so there will be no
more than one slate; the process by which a presidential candidate can
appeal a state's procedures (or a governor sending in his own
preferred slate rather than that chosen by state voters) is expedited in
federal court.

As to Trump's desperate argument that a legislature can choose to send
its own slate of electors rather than the one chosen by voters, which
appears to be something that our 18th-century Constitution regards as
permissible, the proposed act stipulates that if legislators' take it
into their deranged little heads to do that, they have to pass
legislation changing the procedure before-not on or after-Election
Day.

That might be enough to keep such so-called originalists as Samuel Alito
and Clarence Thomas from striking down the notion of popular elections,
which have actually been around for quite a while. As I learned from
Michael Kazin's excellent new history of the Democratic Party,

**What It Took to Win,**by 1832 every state had decided to let voters,
not the legislature, choose the president, with the single exception of
that beacon of democratic values, South Carolina. Alito and Thomas
probably think that South Carolina had the right idea, but the bill now
before the Senate says if any legislature wants to go that way, they
have to affront their electorate before they face them at the polls.

To be sure, the proposed legislation, which already has nine Republican
senators supporting it and thus needs just one more to get past the
filibuster, fails to stop Republican-run states from doing all they can
to make it hard for citizens they fear may vote Democratic-chiefly
minorities and the young-from voting. The dynamic duo of Manchin and
Sinema refused to suspend the filibuster to allow a bill doing that from
passing in the Senate. But the bill unveiled yesterday does mend some of
the gaping holes in election law and needs to be enacted, even if the
fundamental way our leaders are chosen are as dated as the spinning
jenny and way more destructive.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Reconciliation Bill Lacks Insulin

How did such a key provision get axed? BY RAMENDA CYRUS

Sean Patrick Maloney's Hazardous Support for Dirty Energy Infrastructure

The story of Maloney's office shutting down a colleague who tried to
stir up opposition to a fracked-gas plant is part of a pattern. BY
ALEXANDER SAMMON

Presidential Climate Malpractice

Joe Biden's mishandling of the many episodes of the Joe Manchin
follies imperiled a burning planet-and the executive actions he should
take have not materialized. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY

What If They Held a Climate Emergency and No Money Came?

Executive actions on climate are important and necessary, but it's
unclear whether they can create the funding required for a green
transition. BY DAVID DAYEN

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