‌‌‌‌‌Bipartisan Senate Group Takes On Presidential Election Subversion

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A bipartisan Senate group is behind new legislation to update the ancient Electoral Count Act, and, perhaps, cut off a few of the avenues for overturning presidential election results. 

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Time To Reform 135-Year-Old Law? 

The Electoral Count Act governs the counting of the Electoral College votes used to determine presidential winners. The 19th-century law was at the root of Donald Trump’s effort to steal a second term in the White House.

Now, a bipartisan group of senators is behind legislation to update the law, and it appears they’re on the brink of the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Senate filibuster.

The package of two bills — which have won the approval of pro-democracy groups and election law professors — features the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act. That bill would specify that the vice president has a purely ministerial role in counting Electoral College votes, raise the threshold in Congress to object to states’ votes, clarify that each state can only submit one slate of electors, and establish that only one official per state can certify those electors. It would also provide a legal pathway for aggrieved candidates to challenge results, with expedited appeal to the Supreme Court, among other steps. 

“I think this very well could be the most important thing this Congress does, and for some of these senators, might be the most important thing they do in their career,” Michael Thorning, director of governance at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said Thursday.

The proposal does have its critics, who imagine among other things a scenario in which a Republican governor declares an election’s winner contrary to the vote count. Others respond that the law prepares for this.

Legitimate Votes Going Uncounted In Pennsylvania 

The PENNSYLVANIA secretary of state’s office has sued three counties for refusing to count mail-in primary ballots that arrived on time and are otherwise signed and legitimate, but which lack a handwritten date entry.

Courts in other cases have so far not found that the missing dates are material to the legitimacy of the ballots in question.

The latest: A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m., and can be viewed here. 

Around The States

“A lot of our constituents out there have lost their humanity and civility,” says the outgoing recorder of Yavapai County, ARIZONA, who’s faced threats and harassment for years despite being a Republican in a county Trump won 2-1 in 2020. 
 

Voting rights groups in INDIANA have filed a complaint over a rule that treats voter registration forms from high school and college campus drives as mailed material — requiring proof of residence from first-time voters, even though that presents an usual burden for teenagers who may not pay utility bills or rent.
 

The OHIO Supreme Court found, again, that the state’s Republican-drawn congressional maps are unconstitutionally gerrymandered in Republicans’ favor. Nonetheless, the gerrymandered districts are being used this election cycle. 
 

The results are in: SOUTH CAROLINA established no-excuse early voting and it went well! 

The Latest In Election Sabotage

A COLORADO man whose wife has been missing for more than two years pleaded guilty to casting her mail-in ballot for Trump. “I figured all these other guys are cheating,” said Barry Morphew, who is avoiding jail time for the felony forgery count. “I know she was going to vote for Trump anyway.”
 

Johnson County, KANSAS Sheriff Calvin Hayden was in the news last week for his efforts to interfere with local elections. According to the county’s attorney, Hayden sought to limit ballot drop box hours and eliminate them at libraries. He also wanted law enforcement to pick up ballots, and for a sheriff’s deputy to observe ballot counting. We wrote about Hayden recently because he was the most prominent sheriff at a “constitutional sheriffs” event that focused on false claims of widespread voter fraud.
 

Former NORTH CAROLINA Chief Justice Mark Martin advised Trump on his efforts to overturn the election results, a newly revealed memo shows. Martin, in a previously unreported speech on Dec. 9, 2020, asserted, “the statutes that should have applied to the election really didn’t.” 
 

“Under surveillance” signs appeared next to ballot drop boxes in King County, WASHINGTON. A QR code on the signs includes the prompt, “Please report suspicious activity here.” It leads to an “election incident report” page on the county Republican Party’s website.
 

Donald Trump was on the phone with WISCONSIN Assembly Speaker Robin Vos just a few days ago, continuing to pressure him to overturn the state’s lawful 2020 election results (which Vos cannot do). 
 

Meanwhile, the chair of that assembly’s elections committee has called for the (legally impossible) decertification of the 2020 election results. Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R), you may remember, attended the sham “audit” of Maricopa County, Arizona’s 2020 election results in a trip paid for by a One America News anchor’s fundraising group. 

ProPublica: A Government Official Helped Them Register. Now They’ve Been Charged With Voter Fraud.
 

Reveal: Texas Charity That Backs Trump’s Stolen-Election Lie Has Deep Ties to Ken Paxton
 

NPR: The election denial movement is now going door to door
 

NPR: Documents detail the secret strategy behind Trump’s census citizenship question push

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