A massive eleventh-hour spending bill stuffed with thinly vetted backroom deals might seem proof of our political dysfunction. But the omnibus bill approved by Congress last week has democracy fans cheering — because it includes changes to presidential vote counting that could literally save our democracy. Thankfully, the old Electoral Count Act, a misguided law governing presidential electoral votes, has been fixed, blocking the dangerous scenarios that emerged in 2020 of a loophole-enabled coup d’etat.
But there are even bigger reasons to cheer ECA reform. Understood broadly, this reform demonstrates how to fix dysfunction not just for presidential elections but throughout our election system.
ECA reform is usually discussed in narrow procedural terms: higher thresholds for Congress to object to electoral votes and clarification of the vice president’s purely clerical role during vote counting. But these changes are really about removing dangerous partisan conflict of interest. The flaw of the Electoral Count Act is the chance it created for results-altering power to be in the hands of state legislatures, governors, the vice president or members of Congress — who all have direct political interests at stake. Now, except for narrow areas appropriate to Congress’ role, any dispute over who won will end up where it belongs: in courts of law, the institution best able to weigh evidence and render judgment.
