On July 20, a bipartisan group of 16 senators introduced a bill to clarify the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 law that governs how Congress counts the results of the Electoral College. Despite urgent pleas to pass the legislation immediately to update the law Donald Trump and his allies tried to exploit on January 6, 2021, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has not brought the bill up for debate.
Speaking to reporters in the Capitol last week, Utah GOP senator Mitt Romney got about as exasperated as Mitt Romney can get. “Chuck Schumer is not bringing forth the Electoral Count Act. How in the world can you talk about democracy — the need to protect democracy — and not bring forth the Electoral Count Act?” Romney said. This week, Romney thinks he found an answer to that question. “I presume [Schumer] is looking for a messaging bill to show that Republicans are unwilling to protect our elections process,” Romney told National Review in the Capitol on Tuesday. “In fact, quite the opposite is true. We’re very anxious to put in place a reform of the Electoral Count Act, and [Schumer’s] delay has now led to a setting where the House is apparently proposing their own bill, which unfortunately will be a party-line vote in the House that makes it more difficult to actually do something on a bipartisan basis.”
“[The House] really should have taken our bill because it’s bipartisan. It has support from enough Republicans and Democrats to actually become law,” Romney added. “I’m afraid that our Democrat friends these days are more interested in messaging than they are in legislating.”