Congress set to move forward on reforms of Electoral Count Act
WASHINGTON — House Democrats are voting this week on changes to a 19th-century law for certifying presidential elections, their strongest legislative response yet to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
The vote to overhaul the Electoral Count Act, expected Wednesday, comes as a bipartisan group of senators is moving forward with a similar bill. Lawmakers in both parties have said they want to change the arcane law before it is challenged again.
Trump and his allies tried to exploit the law’s vague language in the weeks after the election as they strategized how they could keep Joe Biden out of office, including by lobbying Vice President Mike Pence to object to the certification of Biden’s victory.
Pence refused to do so, but it was clear afterward that there was no real legal framework or recourse to respond under the 1887 law if the vice president had tried to block the count. The House and Senate bills would better define the vice president’s ministerial role and make clear that he or she has no say in the final outcome.
Both versions would also make it harder for lawmakers to object if they don’t like the results of an election, clarify laws that could allow a state’s vote to be delayed, and ensure that there is only one slate of legal electors from each state. One strategy by Trump and his allies was to create alternate slates of electors in key states Biden won, with the ultimately unsuccessful idea that they could be voted on during the congressional certification on Jan. 6 and result in throwing the election back to Trump.
“We’ve got to make this more straightforward to respect the will of the people,” said Senate Rules Committee Chairman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
While the House vote is expected to fall mostly along party lines, the Senate bill has some Republican support and its backers are hopeful they will have the 10 votes they need to break a filibuster and pass it in the 50-50 Senate.
The Senate Rules panel is expected to pass the measure Tuesday, with some tweaks, though a floor vote will most likely wait until November or December, Klobuchar said.
The world’s problems seized the spotlight Tuesday as the U.N. General Assembly’s yearly meeting of world leaders opened with dire assessments of a planet beset by escalating crises and conflicts that an aging international order seems increasingly ill-equipped to tackle.
After two years when many leaders weighed in by video because of the coronavirus pandemic, now presidents, premiers, monarchs and foreign ministers have gathered almost entirely in person for diplomacy’s premier global event.
But the tone is far from celebratory. “We are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
The assembly has agreed to allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak by video, over objections from Russia and a few of its allies.
Zelenskyy’s speech is expected Wednesday, as is an in-person address from U.S. President Joe Biden.
UN General Assembly:
African tensions: Eritrea on Tuesday launched an offensive along the country’s border with northern Ethiopia in what appeared to be an escalation of last month’s renewal of fighting against Tigray forces.
Tigrayan authorities in turn told their people to get ready for war.
The Eritreans are fighting alongside Ethiopian federal forces, including commando units, as well as allied militia, according to Tigray spokesman Getachew Reda.
Later Tuesday, Tigrayan authorities, in a statement citing the region’s “existential challenge,” asked their people to make themselves “fully available for the all-round war we are waging to spoil our enemies’ dreams and aspirations once and for all.”
The war in Tigray is estimated to have killed tens of thousands and left millions without basic services for well over a year.
School shooting parole: A Kentucky man who killed
three students and wounded five in a school shooting 25 years ago told a parole panel Tuesday that he is still hearing voices like the ones that told him to steal a pistol and shoot into a crowded high school lobby in 1997.
The two-person panel hearing Michael Carneal’s testimony deferred a decision until Monday.
Carneal was a 14-year-old freshman on Dec. 1, 1997, when he fired the stolen pistol at a before-school prayer group in the lobby of Heath High School, near Paducah, Kentucky.
Parole Board Chair Ladeidra Jones told Carneal after his testimony that the two members had not reached a unanimous decision and were referring his case to the full board. Only the full board has the power to order Carneal to serve out his full sentence without another chance at parole.
Speaking on a videoconference from the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange, Carneal told the panel that at the time of
the shooting, “I was hearing in my head to do certain things, but I should have known that stealing guns ... was going to lead to something terrible.” He said he has been receiving therapy and taking psychiatric medications in prison but admitted that he still hears voices.
Iran criticized: Iran faced international criticism on Tuesday over the death of a 22-year-old woman held by its morality police, which ignited three days of protests, including clashes with security forces in the capital and other unrest that claimed at least three lives.
The U.N. human rights office called for an investigation. The United States called on the Islamic Republic to end its “systemic persecution” of women. Italy also condemned her death. Iranian officials dismissed the criticism as politically motivated.
Separately, an Iranian official said three people had been killed by unnamed armed groups in the Kurdish
region of the country where the protests began, the first official confirmation of deaths linked to the unrest.
VP urges voting: Vice President Kamala Harris visited two historically Black colleges in Orangeburg, South Carolina, to push for voter registration as she focuses on places and demographics key to Democrats’ chances to hold on to Congress in the midterms.
In remarks Tuesday to first-year students at South Carolina State University, where President Joe Biden addressed graduates last year, Harris highlighted what she characterized as the need for young voters to participate in political pushes to protect voting rights and oppose efforts to restrict abortion.
Earlier on National Voter Registration Day, Harris participated in a roundtable with students at Claflin University where she touted the administration’s actions around race and education.