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The US and world are bracing for post-election chaos in Washington on Jan. 6, 2025, as Congress prepares to name a presidential winner. The reality is another story: It will be much harder to stop the certification this time around.
Lawmakers believe that their approval of the electoral count is far more likely to go smoothly this time around, despite former President Donald Trump’s celebration of the rioters who disrupted the certification of his loss four years ago. Thanks to an under-the-radar bipartisan 2022 law that significantly narrowed members’ abilities to challenge presidential election results, Hill denizens are breathing a little easier as the election approaches.
One key change: Previously, only one senator and House member could join forces to object to any state’s presidential results and force a vote. That objection threshold is now orders of magnitude higher — 20 senators and 87 House members, one-fifth of each chamber.
“I fully expect that there will be some attempts to have baseless objections. But I do not believe they will be able to meet the 20 percent threshold in each body,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, one of the law’s chief sponsors, told Semafor. “The reforms we enacted will go a long way toward preventing another January 6.”
The new Senate objection threshold is so high that, under the 2022 law, Congress would already have certified President Joe Biden’s victory before the violent mob broke into the Capitol four years ago. The new law also makes clear that the vice president has only a symbolic role in the electoral count and makes it easier to reject baseless challenges to individual states’ results.
The law’s potency may take on huge national relevance in the coming weeks, as Trump stokes Democratic fears of a repeat election challenge in the event of his defeat. He’s called Jan. 6 a “day of love,” and his running mate has declined to recognize Trump’s 2020 loss. Still, while Republicans who helped craft the 2022 law aren’t directly warning of repeat threats to the transition of power, they’re making clear they believe they’ve done what they needed to do.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. compared the upcoming Jan. 6 certification to the year 2000s Y2k scare, which stoked fears of disaster that didn’t pan out.
“It could be a dud. But to the extent that we have any vulnerabilities coming out of Jan. 6, 2021, we addressed it,” said Tillis, who unlike Collins has endorsed Trump.
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The Capitol attack casts a longer shadow over Washington as Election Day gets closer in large part because of how Republicans talk about this year’s presidential results. The party’s House Speaker, Mike Johnson, vowed that “Congress will follow the Constitution,” which requires whoever is speaker on Jan. 6 to hold a joint session to certify the results. He’s also left the door open to what he called “commonplace” electoral objections by lawmakers.
The most likely setting for unreset now is a state capitol, where votes are certified and electors appointed. But anyone seeking to upend certification of the results will still have to deal with the 2022 law’s overhaul of how ballot results are approved at the state level.
Collins specifically pointed to the law’s expedited judicial review as well as its constraints on the selection of state electors; saying that “if you don’t like the results, you can’t change how you choose the electors.”
Led by Collins and Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W-Va., Congress cleared the electoral law in late 2022 as part of a massive year-end government spending deal, weeks before Republicans officially took back the House.
“It got very little attention. And I think that’s unfortunate, because I would like for there to be more knowledge of the fact that we cleaned up this archaic law,” Collins said.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was the lone dissenter when the law cleared a key Senate committee. Yet as he battles for reelection against a well-funded Democratic challenger who’s criticized his 2020 election objection, Cruz is reluctant to pan it.
He suggested during a recent campaign stop in his home state that he’s more concerned with state-level efforts to combat potential voting irregularities.
“The best solution for voter fraud is to stop it on the front end,” Cruz told Semafor. “It’s why I’m glad Texas has helped lead the country in passing strong election integrity laws.”
The 2022 law’s reach is not infinite. Democrats’ worries have turned away from the details of certification and toward the speaker’s power over the joint session that’s required to approve state ballots.
It “makes me feel a little more secure, but there’s nothing we can write in law that prevents corrupt actors from trying to block a legitimate state election result,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., one of the law’s architects, told Semafor.
“So if pro-Trump Republicans have control of the House and they want to engage in a coup,” he added, “the new Electoral Count Act makes it harder for them to do that, but it doesn’t make it impossible.”
Burgess and Elana’s View
If Trump loses, his supporters in swing states and Congress could certainly try to cast doubt on Harris’ win by amplifying claims of potential voting irregularities, real or fantasized. We might even see a coordinated effort to challenge specific state results on Jan. 6, 2025.
If Harris loses what looks like a neck-and-neck election, however, elected Democrats are less likely to cry voter fraud. Back in 2016, House Democratic dissenters were unable to find a senator to help them challenge Trump’s win after past bicameral protests.
The new electoral count law means Congress would only vote on objections that got the support of 20 senators and 87 House members. As iron as Trump’s grip on the GOP is, that’s a lot of lawmakers — and the party’s senators in particular have shown a much stronger appetite for spurning him when he’s at his weakest.