Can Democrats settle for Electoral College reform?

This week “will be dominated” by congressional battle over whether voting rights rules should be changed to pass Democrats’ voting rights bill, report News about Punchbowl, but an alternative could be evaporation.

Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine)’s attempt to change the Vote Counts Act of 1887 was seen as an increasingly viable option for working around the centrist Democrats’ refuse to budge on filebusters. “An increasingly broad and powerful array of legislators are rallying around” this idea, writes Axios, explains that this strategy will change the way Congress checks Electoral College votes to certify elections. Most likely inclusion would be to “raise the threshold of objection beyond just a single senator and representative, and make clear the vice president’s role is ceremonial.”

Lawmakers from House of Representatives Jim Clyburn (DS.C.) to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to 2020 Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) have voiced support for the move. change the ECA. As Bulwark opines, the current ECA is “dangerously” unclear and leaves open a number of questions that could be clarified by Congress to reduce errors in future elections.

Despite President Biden’s emphatic speech calling on Democrats to change their minds, any hope of momentum on that front seems dashed now. Even so, the reports Hill, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) scheduled a vote on the Freedom of Voting Act for Wednesday, even though it is “intended to fail.” With that gloomy outlook, write Axios, changing the Voter Counts Act could be “the best chance of getting through any form of electoral reform in a divided Congress.”