When Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act in the wake of former President Donald Trump's post-2020 election effort to reverse his loss, leaders in both parties said it would help safeguard future elections.
There are still holes that could be exploited, however, especially at the local level. Some of those holes are already being tested by local officials, such as refusing to certify elections at the county level, according to Matthew Seligman, a fellow at Stanford's Constitutional Law Center and co-author of the 2024 book "How to Steal a Presidential Election."
"Due to the changes in the Electoral Count Reform Act, the effort has shifted to try to get county boards of elections, and then potentially state-level boards of election, to have some kind of authority to refuse to certify the election results," Seligman told USA TODAY.
In 2020, Trump tried to convince Republican members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count the Electoral College votes after Joe Biden won the election.
The Electoral Count Reform Act makes that approach more difficult by clarifying that the vice president's vote-counting role is ceremonial and by raising the number of votes in Congress needed to object to election results.
Sign-up for Your Vote: Text with the USA TODAY elections team
Post a Comment