Realistic, and it probably won’t pass.
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So, you stop when you need glasses, duh…
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The word “bipartisan” glows with glitter to the MSM. Using that word lets them open the door to Narnia!
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There’s a bunch of good stuff in there, notably providing that electors have to be chosen based on the laws in effect at the time of the election – in other words, no state legislatures going backsies if they don’t like who won. There’s also a smart provision that gives states the authority to fiddle with or extend their election day in an emergency, but again only under laws enacted before the election. On the whole, it looks like good legislation. But why they would give the chief circuit judge majority-appointment power on a three-judge panel is beyond me.
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Mostly over. We’ll still have to do the dance where one Senator (pool begins now on who, but I’ve already put my money on Cruz or Paul) one Senator holds the whole thing up faux-lerbusting it and we get to see which “bipartisan” Senators are willing to walk the walk.
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I read:
Further, the proposal eliminates a provision of an 1845 law that allows state legislatures to disregard the popular vote in the event of a “failed election.”
and I cheered. Then,
I read:
In the event of election disputes, under the legislation, a federal three-judge panel will hear the matter, with appeals going directly to the Supreme Court on an expedited basis.
And I went back to being depressed.
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So no wardrobe needed?
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It’ll be a triad.
Manchin and Collins?
The Odd Couple, Strange Bedfellows, nearly a Capulet/Montague paring.
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But will our Fascist Five overlords declare it unconstitutional? The 2nd amendment gives gun-owners permission to overthrow the government whenever, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary.
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You’d think the Republicans need this bill to pass almost as much as the Dems do. It’ll go a long way to helping them pivot away from 1/6 without having to actually hold Trump personally accountable.
I really don’t think the real power brokers on either side of the aisle want to blow this thing up over a few years of Trumps bullshit - some version of Dems and Republicans have helped each other completely control this country for well over 2 centuries. Why else all the behind the scenes photos of all of them playing grab ass with each other and laughing like best friends? All the talks about the long lunches the SCOTUS have together? They’re in on the benefits of power sharing dynamic. Sure, compete hard against each other. But most importantly, preserve the rigged dynamic that keeps just your two teams winning the game.
In 1971, Nixon (Yes, Richard Nixon) proposed national health insurance. Ted Kennedy scuttled the deal because he thought he could get a better one. Ted royally fucked up. So don’t piss all over something that’s a dramatic improvement from where we are just because you want something better.
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This is tinkering around the edges. It does nothing, and to be fair, can’t do anything, to deal with the basic problems in how the presidential election is finalized.
It makes the VP’s role purely ceremonial. Great, but it’s not as if the VP could steal the election anyway under the ECA. Of course the joint session, if it didn’t already have rules to allow the VP to be bypassed, as he has been in the past, could have such rules agreed by both chambers within minutes if need be. This is a rules problem, not a law problem.
At the joint session, you would need 20% of each chamber, instead of just one member from each, to start the process of subjecting a EV tally to challenge. Great, but since you need 50% plus one to finish a challenge successfully, only challenges that have at least close to 50% present any danger of reversing the popular vote. What does this reform accomplish?
It is not clear from this item exactly what election disputes would go to this three-judge panel, and thence to SCOTUS. If all of them, if no disputes other than those that the courts can resolve are to be allowed, why have a joint session? The election would be decided by the courts, with the joint session out of the picture, except perhaps as a purely ceremonial occasion. If we still had the Warren court, maybe this would actually be a good idea, making the courts the controlling legal authority over presidential elections. But since we have the Alito court instead, no thank you. I’ll take my chances with the misdeeds of political hacks who are more openly nothing more than political hacks, and who, unlike judges, have to answer to the electorate for their misdeeds.
Not that either the ECA or this proposed law would be enforceable by the courts anyway. A simple majority of either chamber could force an impasse by the simple expedient of refusing to join the joint session, and no court could enjoin them to cooperate. Majorities in either chamber could declare an EV tally to be corrupt, throw it out, and not have that judgment reviewable by any court. Just as there cannot be an enforceable balanced budget law, because no Congress can bind the will of a future Congress, so there can be no law enforceable by the courts that could force Congress to follow this law, or the ECA. This is undoubtedly why the Election Law Blog quote tells us that future Congresses would have to remain faithful to its philosophy for it to work. A group of two year olds are more likely to act with faithfulness and according to any philosophy than any Congress with an R majority. We only need protection against R majority Congresses, because fidelity to the philosophy of what we have already would be perfectly adequate to insure that Congress doesn’t just steal the election. What planet have these Election Law Blog people been living on?
Even if these reforms would actually prevent the Rs from just stealing the next presidential election legally, by just having challenges to EV tallies that they would decide in favor of the R candidate, as our overall presidential election scheme stands, we need the joint session to be able to throw out corrupt EV tallies sent in by red states. At least a half dozen of the red-controlled states have already changed their laws to make it possible for their legislatures to do exactly that, throw out any D EV tally in favor of an R tally.
Until and unless we reform all the parts of the process together, changing just the federal end of it is a worse than useless idea. This thing doesn’t seem to create any real barriers to partisan majorities in Congress stealing the election at the federal level, but insofar as it makes that even a bit difficult, if only the optics of it, the state level is if anything more of a problem, and we shouldn’t make it more difficult for a D Congress to quash a red state steal.
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Honorable men and women don’t need to tweak their words.
The only reason this is happening is because snakes and weasels have wholly corrupted our process, so that any loopholes they can curl by pretzel interpretation are legitimized simply by default.
They turn everything around to mean what they will, and they don’t enforce the rules against their pals.
Doesn’t matter how they word it, as long as sleazy, money-hungry Republicans can jigger the meaning in their own minds, they can turn “good” into “bad” without a hitch or a pause.
And vice-versa.
Words really don’t matter to liars. They are just another convenient tool of deception and there is no way to safen the process as long as they don’t live by any standards but greed.
The problem isn’t the wording, it is the Republican hypocrisy about our entire system of equity.
Whatever is written down and codified only counts if it affords them their obscene increase.
Years ago, I remember then-OK-senator David Boren lamenting the effects of a very good piece of legislation because “it wasn’t bipartisan.” If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, bipartisanship must be the last refuge of the dime-a-dozen senator.
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I just finished reading the blueprint for the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Gore Vidal’s 1876. Aside from the obvious cash bribes (we don’t know much about the 2020 bribes), the scenario that the Trump boys followed was quite similar to the 1876 Republicans. I imagine that, as I write this, the lads working on “Schedule F” down at Mar-a-Dumpo are also busy gaming out the 2024 election, based on the proposed new laws.
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