In its dash to get out of Washington to end the year, Congress thankfully passed an important bill that has been in the works for quite some time.
Passage of legislation to reform the Electoral Count Act (ECA) may have happened at the last minute, as part of a larger government spending package, but this vital update to an antiquated law was made possible by months of hard work and bipartisan dialogue. Ever since violence erupted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — fueled in part by former President Donald Trump and his attempts to weaponize ECA ambiguities — the need to update and better safeguard the process for counting electoral votes has been obvious.
Sometimes even the obvious things don’t get done in Washington. In this case, continued work and significant support from both parties got it across the finish line. This is a victory for American democracy.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins introduced the bill and was a lead negotiator, along with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The sustained work of these bipartisan negotiators eventually secured enough support, including from both Democratic and Republican leadership, to pass the bill in a closely divided U.S. Senate. This was no small feat.
“The Senate’s ECA reform effort is the result of nearly a year of bipartisan negotiation, including numerous meetings and debates among our colleagues as well as conversations with a wide variety of election experts and legal scholars,” Collins and Manchin said in a...
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