The bill, which is similar to bipartisan legislation moving in the Senate, would overhaul an arcane 1800s-era statute known as the Electoral Counting Act that governs, along with the U.S. Constitution, how states and Congress certify the electors and declare the winners of the presidential elections. While that process has long been routine and ceremonial, Trump and a team of aides and lawyers have tried unsuccessfully to exploit loopholes in the law in an attempt to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Democrats are pushing for the passage of the bill before the end of the year and ahead of the 2024 election cycle as Trump considers another run. While at least 10 GOP senators have signed on to the Senate version, the House vote fell mostly along party lines. House Republicans — most of whom are still aligned with Trump — have argued that the legislation should not be a priority and is a political vehicle for Democrats ahead of November’s midterm elections. The final vote was 229-203, with nine Republicans voting in favor of the bill along with all Democrats. None of the nine Republicans will return to Congress next year. The legislation would set new parameters around the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that takes place every four years after a presidential election. The day turned violent last year after hundreds of Trump supporters disrupted proceedings, stormed the building and threatened the lives of then-Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress. The rioters repeated Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud and wanted Pence to block Biden’s victory as he presided over the joint session. The legislation is intended to ensure that future Jan. 6 sessions are “as constitutionally envisioned, a ministerial day,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican who co-sponsored the legislation with House Administration Committee Chairman Zoe Lofgren, from California. Both Cheney and Lofgren are also members of the House committee investigating the January 6 attack. Before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the legislation was necessary as efforts have been made in states across the country to change election laws to make it easier to void future results. “We now have a formal duty to ensure that future efforts to undermine our elections do not succeed,” Pelosi said. The bill would clarify in law that the role of the vice president who presides over the count is only ceremonial and that he or she cannot change the results. It also stipulates that each state can send only one certified set of electors after Trump allies unsuccessfully tried to assemble alternative lists of pro-Trump illegal voters in states where Biden won. “This bill will make it harder to convince people that they have the right to overturn an election,” Lofgren said. The legislation would raise the threshold for individual lawmakers to object to any state’s electoral votes, requiring one-third of the House and one-third of the Senate to oppose triggering votes on the results in both chambers. Currently, only one lawmaker in the House and one lawmaker in the Senate must oppose it. The House bill would define very narrow grounds for those objections, an effort to prevent meritless or politically motivated challenges. In addition, the bill would require the courts to get involved if state or local officials want to delay a presidential vote or refuse to certify the results. The House vote comes as the Senate moves on a similar trajectory with enough Republican support to effectively ensure a vote before the end of the year. After months of talks, House Democrats introduced their legislation on Monday and held a fast-track vote two days later to send the bill to Capitol Hill and begin to iron out differences. A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation this summer, and a Senate committee is expected to vote on it next week. While the House bill is more expansive than the Senate version, the two bills cover similar ground, and members in both chambers are optimistic they can resolve the differences. And despite the largely party-line vote in the House, supporters are encouraged by the bipartisan effort in the Senate. “Both sides have an incentive to want a clear set of rules, and this is an antiquated law that nobody understands,” said Benjamin Ginsburg, a longtime GOP lawyer who advised lawmakers as they wrote the bill. “All parties benefit from clarity.” House GOP leaders encouraged their members to vote against the legislation. They said court involvement could delay elections and said the bill would take away rights from states. The bill is an “attempt to federalize our elections,” Rep. Guy Resenthaler, R-Pa., said on the House floor. He argued that voters are more focused on the economy and other issues than the electoral law. “In my area in Pennsylvania, nobody talks about it,” Reschenthaler said. Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, Lofgren’s GOP counterpart on the House Administration Committee, said Democrats are “desperately trying to talk about their favorite subject, and that is former President Donald Trump.” Democrats said the bill was not only a response to Trump, but also a way to prevent objections and mischief from all candidates in the future. “If you think this legislation is an attack on President Trump, you just haven’t read the legislation because there’s nothing that attacks President Trump,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., another member of the Jan. 6 bill. panel. “This is about reforming the election count law so it works for the American people.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., was more blunt. He criticized Republicans who defended Trump’s actions that day and who played down the seriousness of the former president’s efforts to overturn the election results. Hoyer called the Republican opposition a “rationalization of what I believe is treason. … It was rationalized then, and unfortunately it is being rationalized now.” The nine Republicans who voted for the legislation are either retiring or were defeated for re-election in this year’s GOP primary. Eight of the nine voted to impeach Trump immediately after the uprising. The nine Republicans are Cheney and Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan, Peter Meijer of Michigan, Tom Rice of South Carolina, Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, John Katko of New York and Chris Jacobs from New York. York.
AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
