Reform Electoral Count Act? Yes. Now. -- March 31, 2022 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President John F. Kennedy said what any smart homeowner knows: “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

Kennedy used the line in his 1962 State of the Union address to urge Congress to pass his anti-recession economic legislative agenda. Sixty years later, it’s time to repair the roof of our democracy after the manmade disaster of Jan. 6, 2021, and to prevent another assault on the electoral process.

The violent mob that stormed the Capitol – with some protesters chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” – wanted to overturn the presidential election. They were misinformed and misled by a president who could not accept defeat.

Donald Trump still falsely claims the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which sets timetables and rules for counting electoral votes, allowed Vice President Mike Pence to ditch state election results and install Trump for another four years. Pence did the right thing by refusing to bow to Trump’s power grab.

The Constitution “constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not,” Pence wrote that day in a letter to Congress. Under the 12^th Amendment, the vice president, as president of the Senate, opens the certificates of electoral votes from each state, which are then counted.  

More than a year late, Pence rebuked Trump publicly.

“And I heard this week President Trump said I had the right to `overturn the election.’ President Trump is wrong,” Pence said in February in a speech to the conservative Federalist Society. “I had no right to overturn the election.”

Our system held, but one shudders to think what would have happened IF . . . if Pence had agreed with Trump and others who wanted to run roughshod over the will of the people.

So, what now? To ensure the peaceful transfer of power in the future, we must update and clarify the antiquated Electoral Count Act, once described in a Washington Post story as a “confusing word salad of run-on sentences.”

The Democratic staff of the House Administration Committee studied the law for months and concluded in a 31-page report in January the law is “badly in need of reform” to remove ambiguity about the vote count process. Ambiguity is the leak in democracy’s roof.

Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, announced in late January a bipartisan group of 16 senators, including Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia, is working on legislation to clarify the law, including the vice president’s role as purely ceremonial.

Trump showed his hand in a statement that said in part: “how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?”

Better question: Why should a vice president have the power to overturn the votes of millions of Americans and the hard work of thousands of local and state election officials?

A group of Senate Democratic leaders also is involved in “discussion drafts” of reform.

One likely change would make it harder for members of Congress to challenge a state’s electoral votes and raise the bar for sustaining challenges. Currently, if only one senator and House member object to a state’s results, they can draw out the counting process. Also, the timetable for recounts and lawsuits in the states could be lengthened.

Updating the count act would make counting the votes more fair, but there’s concern that it would do nothing to make voting itself more fair.

Republican candidates still insist the 2020 election was stolen as GOP-run state legislatures tighten election rules and ballot access. House Democrats have tried to pass major voting rights legislation only to see it stalled in the Senate.

Some liberals fear updating the count act alone could make it more difficult to stop Republican state officials from negating elections their favored presidential candidate lost, leaving Congress locked into certification.  

The White House is “open to and a part of conversations about the Electoral Count Act,” but that reform should not replace larger voting reforms, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

Congress needs to address these valid concerns now -- and reform the Electoral Count Act while the sun shines.

©2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

We all pay for shutdown in dollars and trust -- Oct. 17, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Barack Obama says there were no political winners in the crisis over the federal government shutdown and debt limit. Most Americans, regardless of their political persuasion, probably agree.

In Washington, though, every moment has a winner and a loser. Once the latest financial calamity was averted, most political analysts thought the president was a winner because he showed some spine, gave up nothing and kept his signature health care legislation intact.

Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, were losers because they totally misread the political landscape. Their ill-conceived attempt to defund Obamacare shut down the government, idled 800,000 workers for 16 days and hurt the economy – but it yielded only a minor tweak in the health care law. People who seek subsidies to buy insurance on the exchanges will have to provide income verification.

Some tea party Republicans cling to the fig leaf notion that their failed fight over the shutdown actually awakened the nation to the evils of the Affordable Care Act and support will blossom.  Really?  

Meanwhile, every Democrat, Republican and independent coast to coast will pay the cost of the federal shutdown in dollars -- and also in the incalculable currency of trust.

The pricetag of the latest shutdown hasn’t been released, but two shutdowns lasting a total of 26 days in 1995-96 cost more than $1.4 billion, the Congressional Research Service reported. That’s $2.1 billion in current dollars. Most of the money went for back pay for furloughed federal workers.

The dollar waste is unnecessary and maddening. Trust in our institutions and government is in short supply.  

To squander the people’s trust hurts our political system and is heartbreaking.  

“The American people are completely fed up with Washington,” Obama said Thursday.  He’s right, of course, but it would be nice if he or anyone else could say that Washington has learned from its misadventure and will work to rebuild the trust it has squandered. There are only glimmers that some in Congress have learned lessons.   

In reaching the deal, members of Congress did what they should have done months ago. They did their jobs. 

The bipartisan agreement reopened the government and raised the debt limit, allowing the United States to pay the bills it racked up with two unfunded wars and an unfunded Medicare drug benefit. It’s merely a reprieve that postpones the fight. In two months or so, we may face another fiscal crisis. 

The plan Obama signed Thursday funds the government through Jan. 15 and raises the debt ceiling through Feb. 7. On the way there, a bipartisan, bicameral budget conference is supposed to come up with a long-term plan on tax and spending policies by Dec. 13. The two Republicans on the conference committee voted against the bill ending the crisis, and the two Democrats voted for it. That’s hardly a promising sign.

A glimmer of hope is the 14 centrist senators led by Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who worked together on an agreement that served as a point of departure for the final deal. The centrists were disappointed their plan didn’t prevail, but they pledge to keep working together.   

The next round of negotiations could take place in an even  more acidic political atmosphere because of the calendar.  

Obama chided Republicans on Thursday, saying, “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break…what our predecessors spent over two centuries building.”

Some analysts say the looming 2014 congressional elections could have a sobering effect on conservatives in the House. In most congressional districts, though, a Republican incumbent fears a challenger from his right more than a Democratic one. For most House members, compromise in Washington can be a terrible career move.

Traditionally, people hate Congress but like their own member of Congress. That may be changing. About three in four people said they want to see most members of Congress defeated next year. And about four in 10 said they’d like to retire their own member of Congress, a new Pew Research Center survey found.

It’s very possible that we’ll  lurch once again from one financial crisis to the next. That not only would be a shame but would be a drain on what’s left of trust in government.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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