State’s GOP House members vote against electoral count overhaul
WASHINGTON – Wisconsin’s House Democrats on Wednesday helped advance a bill aiming to prevent future attempts to overturn the results of presidential elections — splitting with the state’s five GOP members who opposed it.
The legislation, introduced in response to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, passed the House on a 229-203 vote. All but nine Republicans voted against the measure.
“Changing the electoral certification and objection process is a solution in search of a problem,” said Wisconsin Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who along with Rep. Scott Fitzgerald objected to certifying Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona and Pennsylvania when Congress reconvened after certification was disrupted by the insurrection.
“The process wasn’t broken after the 2000 election; it wasn’t broken after the 2004 election; it wasn’t broken after the 2016 election; it wasn’t broken after the 2020 election; and it isn’t broken now,” Tiffany said.
Fitzgerald did not immediately respond for a request to comment on why he opposed the measure.
The bill, written by Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., would update portions of the 135-yearold Electoral Count Act the pair say Trump and his allies exploited in an attempt to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory — an effort that led to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A key provision in the bill clarifies the vice president’s role in certifying the election as solely “ministerial” and holds that each state has one slate of electors that would need to be certified by the governor.
Wisconsin was among seven states that Biden won where groups of Republicans gathered as presidential electors in 2020 at the direction of the Trump campaign.
The measure would require onethird of both chambers of Congress to object to a state’s results during a joint session in order for that objection to be heard. Current law allows for one senator and one member of the House to object to results.
Both Democrats and Republicans have raised objections in presidential elections but none have been upheld. Cheney on Wednesday said the House bill would narrow the grounds for those objections.
“Our bill will improve the rule of law for all future presidential elections by ensuring that self-interested politicians cannot steal from the people the guarantee that our government derives its power from the consent of the governed,” Cheney said.
Before the vote Wednesday, Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil said the bill was rushed to the floor without a committee hearing. He indicated he would rather have seen a bill that would address inflation, crime or immigration.
“I’m disappointed we didn’t have an opportunity to thoughtfully review the legislation before us,” said Steil, the ranking member on the subcommittee on elections within the House Committee Administration.
“With any important piece of legislation, in particular one like this that impacts our national elections and the elections of our president, the first question I ask myself is: Will the bill before us boost people’s confidence in our election process?”
“The bill fails the test.”
Steil pointed to a portion of the bill he said would allow candidates to define a catastrophic event, which would extend the timetable of the election.
In fact, the bill defines a catastrophic event as “a major natural disaster, an act of terrorism, or a widespread power outage, so long as such event is on a scale sufficient to prevent a substantial portion of a State’s electorate from casting a ballot...”
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s support for the legislation remains uncertain.
Johnson, who has come under fire for his office’s involvement in the attempt to hand then-Vice President Mike Pence fake electors from Wisconsin and Michigan on Jan. 6, has said he will “look at” the bill.
A bipartisan group of senators has a similar version of the bill.
A spokesperson for Wisconsin Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin indicated Baldwin would support the legislation.