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.

Vote by mail -- yes, but . . . July 16, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The old adage about voting “early and often” may be half true this Election Day.

With more voters than ever likely to cast absentee ballots Nov. 3, more will be relying on the U.S. Postal Service. Voting early is advisable.

Major operational changes the new postmaster general is making that could slow mail service are disconcerting, especially as problems with undelivered absentee ballots already have popped up around the country during primary season.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told postal employees Monday in memos obtained and verified by The Washington Post the agency must operate more like a private business, would prohibit overtime and curtail other measures post offices use to deliver mail when understaffed.

Traditionally, the postal service has been run as a service, going the extra mile, so to speak, to make multiple trips to deliver letters and packages rather than leaving them in distribution centers overnight. No more.

“If plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day,” a memo titled “New PMG’s [Postmaster General’s] expectations and plan” said, the Post reported.

Congressional allies of the Postal Service were quick to criticize the changes.

“If these reports are accurate, Trump and his cronies are openly seeking to destroy the post office during the worst public health crisis in a century,” Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said in a statement.

“With states now reliant on voting by mail to continue elections during the pandemic, the destabilizing of the post office is a direct attack on American democracy itself,” said Pascrell.

DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman and Trump mega-donor, took over as postmaster general in June at a critical time. President Donald Trump in April called the Postal Service “a joke” and said it should quadruple its package delivery fees, a move apparently aimed at Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post.

The beleaguered Postal Service is actually faring better financially during the pandemic because of the strong demand for package deliveries. Companies often use the postal service for “last mile” local deliveries.

But even before the latest cost-cutting measures, the Postal Service has struggled to adjust to a surge in absentee ballots. In 2020, many more voters are choosing to vote from home rather than stand in long lines.

In Dallas, some voters who had mailed in their absentee ballots for Tuesday’s elections unaccountably received them back only a day or two before the election, The Dallas Morning News reported.

In Wisconsin, three tubs of absentee ballot were found at a Milwaukee post office after the polls closed for the April 7 election. In addition, absentee ballots requested were not delivered and hundreds more mailed by voters were not postmarked.

Requests for absentee ballots in Wisconsin have soared 440% since 2016, a Postal Service inspector general report found, adding that date changes for mailing and completing ballots due to the coronavirus also complicated the spring elections.

The IG report identified potential nationwide issues it said could affect future elections. Among them: Some states set too-short deadlines to request absentee ballots, ballots lack mail-tracking technology and poor communication between the Postal Service and election offices.

About half the states have deadlines to request ballots of less than a week before Election Day. These deadlines “put ballots at high risk of not being delivered to voters before an election,” the report warned.

In Virginia, the deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail is 5 p.m. Oct. 23, but a voter can request an absentee ballot online or vote in person at their local registrar’s office 45 days before Election Day. You no longer need a reason to vote early in person or to cast an absentee ballot.

If you’re returning your ballot by mail, it must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by your registrar by noon on the third day after the election. Rules are slightly different for first time voters. See Virginia rules.  

No one knows what the novel coronavirus will be doing Nov. 3. So, don’t wait until the last minute. Vote early. America needs every ballot to count.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Summer pleasure: staying cool -- July 4, 2019 column

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By MARSHA MERCER

When the afternoon summer sun beats on the thermometer outside my kitchen window, the red liquid in the gauge shoots all the way to the top -- 120 degrees.

The radio and TV report it’s only in the mid-90s, but I feel the thermometer’s pain.

“It’s HOT out here,” it seems to scream. “HOT, HOT, HOT.” I take it seriously -- not literally.

At least we’re not in France, where the recorded temperature reached 114.6 degrees – the highest ever -- the other day. At least we have air conditioning.

Europeans have always felt superior to Americans for our wimpy reliance on artificially cooled air.

“People here don’t like air conditioning. They think it’s a waste of energy, it’s bad for the environment, and people say it makes them sick,” a Californian who has lived abroad for a decade, the last four years in Berlin, told The Wall Street Journal.

When it rarely got too hot for comfort, Europeans closed up shop – and schools and offices, too. Don’t laugh. Remember what happens when an inch of snow falls on Washington. 

But early summer heat waves have swept Germany, France and Spain -- countries that have traditionally coped with summer heat with electric fans.

Only about 5 percent of European households have air conditioning, compared with 90 percent of Americans, according to a report last year by the International Energy Agency.

That worked when the temperature rose above the mid-80s only a few days a year, but as 100-degree days become more frequent, Europeans are questioning whether they can continue their holier-than-thou attitude toward mechanically cooled air.

You never think you need the Klimaanlage – the German word that literally means climate apparatus – until the temperature hits triple digits.

The worldwide demand for air conditioning will soar in coming years, the energy agency says. It predicts 10 new air conditioners will be sold every second for the next 30 years. The number of AC systems installed in buildings is expected to rise from 1.6 billion in 2016 to 5.6 billion in 2050.

And that raises “an urgent need for policy action to improve cooling efficiency,” the agency said. Unfortunately, the Trump administration doesn’t see the need.

It stopped enforcing the 2015 rule that prohibited use of HFCs or  hydrofluorocarbons, powerful greenhouse gases that are linked to climate change, in air conditioners and refrigerators, and is rolling back scores of other environmental rules.

Meanwhile, it’s hot out there.

Naturally, sweltering Europe has made dandy fodder for reporters writing for the American audience.

The Washington Post’s man in Berlin reported: “Residents are sharing maps on social media of air-conditioned buildings and cafes in their area, fans and portable cooling systems are sold out, employers are worried the lack of cooling is killing productivity, and at least one Berlin air-conditioning installer suspended its phone service because of a flood of calls, according to a recorded voice message.”

German authorities, worried the surface of the famous Autobahn will melt in the heat, has set speed limits in some areas. France barred cars over 10 years old from some city centers to curb pollution.

A fellow in Germany caught riding naked on a motorcycle said it was too hot for clothes, and women in Munich were told to put their bikini tops back on.

In the United Kingdom, SkyNews advised Brits to stash their pyjamas and pillow cases in the freezer before bedtime and, of course, to carry an umbrella -- the British answer for any weather emergency.

Sizzling Europeans might learn from orator, Secretary of State and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, who, in America’s pre-AC era, had a secret, low-tech technique to keep cool on the summer lecture circuit:

“I take a small piece of ice . . . I put it in the palm of my right hand and hold it tightly. Then I shift it to my left hand, holding it in either hand for about five minutes. Then I pass my cold hands over my forehead. I have always found this very effective,” Bryan said, according to an article on the White House Historical Association site.

As for me, I’d rather keep cool with the ice in a drink and the AC cranked up.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All right reserved.

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Government shouldn't shun our generosity -- June 27, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The Independence Day fireworks display on the National Mall will last about 35 minutes this year, twice the length of the typical show.

The bigger and better display is thanks to donations by two private fireworks companies of equipment and personnel worth $750,000 to the National Park Service.

“We wanted to do this as a gift to America,” the president of one of the companies told The Washington Post.

It probably didn’t hurt that President Donald Trump is personally orchestrating 4^th of July festivities, and the fireworks industry wants an exemption from the next round of 

Trump tariffs on Chinese goods, which includes fireworks.

Be that as it may, it’s baffling the government can accept donations of fireworks but not of diapers.

As the administration planned the July 4^th  extravaganza, we learned hundreds of migrant children were being held in dirty, overcrowded conditions at a Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Texas.

“`There Is a Stench'” The New York Times headline read on a June 21 story that detailed how attorneys who visited Clint said babies lacked diapers and children of various ages had inadequate food and water and no access to baths, soap, toothbrushes or toothpaste.

The facility built for about 100 adults temporarily had been stretched to house hundreds more children for weeks.

Then we saw the heart-breaking photo of the young father and daughter who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande for a better life.  

The administration says it has been overwhelmed by an influx of migrants at the border. The Border Patrol transferred some of the children at Clint out and then back as other facilities became overcrowded.

The White House and Congress couldn’t get their act together to provide humanitarian relief -- so Texans did.  

Last Sunday, Austin Savage and five friends went to a Target in El Paso and spent $340 on diapers, wipes, soap and toys, the Texas Tribune reported. But when they tried to deliver the goods, the detention center lobby was closed and no one would come to the door.

Border Patrol agents in the parking lot saw, but ignored, them, Savage said.

Then the friends realized they weren’t the first to try to help. A plastic bag near the lobby door held toothpaste and soap and a note: “I heard y’all need soap + toothpaste for kids.”

Savage returned on Monday to deliver the items and again was ignored, NPR reported.

State Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat from South Texas, asked the government for a list of acceptable donations. “They do not accept donations,” he tweeted. “How ridiculous is this?”

Why no donations? One weak, but possible explanation cited is the Antideficiency Act of 1870, which says the government can’t spend beyond the funds Congress appropriates and cannot accept donations of personal services that have not been approved by Congress.

When I took a look at the law, though, I found no references to goods, just to services.

And a 2008 Department of Homeland Security directive says: “DHS may accept gifts to carry out program functions regardless of whether or not appropriated funds are available for that purpose, provided such expenditures are not barred by law or regulation.”

Companies and wealthy individuals have long opened their wallets to help the government. People have donated millions of dollars to the Treasury to help pay down the national debt.

After an earthquake shook the Washington Monument in 2012, billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein donated $7.5 million to match the federal funds Congress had allocated for repairs.

Rubenstein has also donated $4.5 million to the National Zoo for the giant panda program and $13.5 million to the National Archives, among other projects.

Few can make such grand gifts, but ordinary Americans are generous, too.

The good news is conditions in Clint reportedly have improved. Journalists who visited Wednesday said monitors were watching the kids, and officials say they have enough supplies. They’re studying whether they can legally accept donations.

That our government would have a double standard allowing it to accept donations of fireworks and not of diapers is absurd. Worse, it’s obscene.

The policy must change quickly.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Let's celebrate a president who never stopped working -- Aug. 30, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Jimmy Carter, who turns 94 on Oct. 1, swung a hammer this week at a Habitat for Humanity project in Indiana.

Sweating in the hot sun while doing manual labor may not be most people’s ideal activity for their 90s, but the former president and his wife Rosalynn, 91, have helped build homes for poor families for the last 35 years.

Carter says they “get more out of it than we put into it.”

As we mark Labor Day by taking a day off, let us also celebrate former President Jimmy Carter, working man.

When voters in the 1980 election sent Carter packing after one lackluster term in the White House, his peanut business in Plains, Ga., was in shambles. He had to create his next act.

An ex-president longer than anyone else, he long ago proved his character and redeemed his reputation by living modestly in the same ranch house in Plains he built in 1961, by refusing to trade on the presidency, and by performing good works.

“The Democratic former president decided not to join corporate boards or give speeches for big money because, he says, he didn’t want `to capitalize financially on being in the White House,’” Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan wrote in a profile of “The un-celebrity president” in the Aug. 17 Washington Post. 

Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle reportedly landed a $65 million joint book deal last year. Bill and Hillary Clinton command hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single speech, and daughter Chelsea isn’t far behind.

"I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Carter told the Post. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich.”

Carter set to work writing books – and has turned out about three dozen. He founded 

The Carter Center in Atlanta, a nonprofit that prevents and resolves conflicts, fights disease and promotes freedom and democracy around the world. He still teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.

Studies show volunteering helps the volunteer live longer, but Carter’s long life is also testament to medical innovation. Three years ago, his future looked iffy.

In August 2015, he said his melanoma had spread to his liver and there were four cancerous spots in his brain. He had surgery to remove the small tumor from his liver, and doctors then used a relatively new immunotherapy and radiation treatment. Four months later, he was cancer free.

Maybe you saw news on social media in this month that Carter’s cancer was back. A tweet shared 26,000 times and then another tweet with 156,000 shares asked for prayers for Carter.

Fortunately it wasn’t so.

The Carter Center tweeted on Aug. 22: “Stories in the last day on social media stating that Jimmy Carter has cancer again are based on old news reports in 2015. There are no updates to our last statement about his health, and a recent scan showed no cancer.”

Carter has mostly refrained from criticizing the current president; he says he prays for him.

But, he allows, President Donald Trump is “very careless with the truth.”

This especially matters to Carter because during his 1976 campaign he closed nearly every speech with a pledge never to lie to the American people. The country was bruised and battered by the lies that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.  

Reporters groaned when they heard the pledge, but the unknown Georgian impressed voters with his sincerity. Carter says he stuck to his pledge.

“I think I went through my campaign and my presidency without ever lying to the people or making a deliberately false statement,” he told John Dickerson Tuesday on “CBS This Morning. “And I think that would be a very worthwhile thing to reinsert into politics these days.”

In contrast, the Post Fact Checker tallied 4,229 false or misleading statements by Trump in 558 days.

Carter has inspired many to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, including talk show host David Letterman, who was in Indiana with him this week.  

Seeing Carter and working on the projects “is such a lovely break from the cynicism of life,” Letterman told Dickerson.

We could all use a break from cynicism. Thank you, Jimmy Carter.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Surprising elections make voters great again -- Dec. 13, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The dramatic election of Democrat Doug Jones as a senator from Alabama was at once stunning and reassuring.

Stunning because it had been nearly 25 years since Alabama sent a Democrat to the Senate, and just last year Alabama embraced Donald Trump by nearly 30 points over Hillary Clinton.

Reassuring because it, along with last month’s Virginia election, showed our political system -- messy and rowdy as it is -- still works.

Trump’s winning the White House despite losing the popular vote last year led to lasting frustration and a sense of powerlessness among some Democrats. But in state and congressional races no Electoral College stands in the way of the popular will.

The message from voters in Alabama, Virginia and New Jersey this year was a resounding no to the benighted politics of the past.  

“Decency wins,” Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, tweeted Tuesday night, one several Republicans who praised Alabama voters. Flake, who is retiring, had tweeted a picture of his $100 contribution to the Jones campaign.

Jones had been the lead federal prosecutor in cases against two Ku Klux Klansmen in the 1963 bombing of the 16^th Baptist Church in Birmingham, which took the lives of four black girls. Jones won convictions in both cases in 2001 and 2002.

For Democrats who hope to turn back the Trump tide in congressional elections next fall, the Alabama contest was consequential. It shaves the Republican majority in the Senate to 51 to 49.  

“This is a political earthquake,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, who heads Democrats’ 2018 Senate campaign effort. He cited as part of the earthquake the elections in Virginia and other states and localities.

Alabama answered the question whether black voters in the Deep South will turn out for a Democrat who is not Barack Obama. Yes, they can.

About 30 percent of Alabama voters Tuesday were black, and 96 percent of them voted for Jones, exit polls reported. That’s about the same share of the black vote President Obama received in 2012.

Solid-red Alabama suggests Democrats may be able to persuade more Southern whites to vote blue. Obama received just 15 percent of Alabama white vote in 2012; Jones got 30 percent.

And, perhaps more significant going forward, younger voters and suburbanites in Alabama decisively went for Jones.

 Trump remains personally popular in some quarters -- Alabama voters approved and disapproved of him equally -- but he exhibited no coattails. His tweet and robocall endorsements were words in the storm of words.

After his gubernatorial candidate lost in Virginia, Trump lost twice in Alabama. He’d backed Moore’s competitor in the GOP primary, then fully endorsed Moore near the end of the campaign and attacked Jones.

When Moore lost, Trump dodged blame, tweeting he’d been right all along that Moore couldn’t win a general election. The “deck was stacked against him,” Trump tweeted.

More accurately, Moore had stacked the deck against himself.

Long before The Washington Post’s reports of allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore roiled the campaign last month, Moore had a history of judicial defiance and racist and homophobic comments.

He denied all the sexual misconduct allegations, and fewer than one in 10 voters said they were the most important factor in their vote, according to exit polls.

The splintering of the GOP also played a role in Jones’s victory, but it’s doubtful another candidate anywhere could engender as much bipartisan animosity as Moore.

The last Democrat who successfully ran for the Senate in Alabama was Richard Shelby in 1986, who was reelected in 1992. Two years later, he switched parties and still represents Alabama. But Republican Shelby couldn’t stomach his party’s candidate and announced he’d written in someone else.

It’s too soon to declare Trump irrelevant or Trumpism dead, but neither has the ruddy glow of health at the moment.

Trump tweeted his congratulations to Jones election night and called him the day after. Hoping to find an ally, he invited Jones to the White House.

Jones has promised civility and to work with Republicans when possible.

“The people of Alabama expect me to do the right thing and vote for the people of Alabama,” said Jones in a news conference. He faces the voters again in 2020.

 ©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.