3 Democratic senators introduce legislation to prevent another January 6-style coup attempt

• Three senators introduced legislation to stop another January 6-style coup attempt.
• The bill reforms provisions of the Electoral Count Act to curb efforts to overturn elections.

Three Democratic senators on Tuesday unveiled draft legislation aimed at preventing a repeat of January 6, 2021 — and also curbing any attempts by future presidential candidates and others to overturn presidential elections.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, and Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, released a draft of their Electoral Count Modernization Act. The bill would reform and modernize the federal law that governs how Congress counts Electoral College votes and should resolve disputes over which slate of electors to count.

The once-obscure Electoral Count Act of 1887 took center stage leading up to the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021. Then-President Donald Trump unsuccessfully pressured legislatures in states won by President Joe Biden to send "alternate" slates of presidential electors to Congress and openly tried to strong-arm Vice President Mike Pence into "sending back" slates of electors to delay the ratification of Biden's victory and, as Trump put it in a Sunday statement, "overturn" the election.

Now, the Senate is seeing growing bipartisan momentum in favor of giving the 135-year-old law a 21st-century update, which would clarify and update some of its more ambiguous and confusing provisions — like how Congress should resolve disputes over multiple slates of electors from the state — and stave off Trump-style attempts at election manipulation.

The legislation released by Durbin, Klobuchar, and King takes aim at efforts by state-level officials, like legislatures and governors, to overturn election results. It includes a provision intended to preclude a governor from going rogue and submitting a fraudulent state of electors not selected by voters on Election Day. It does so by more efficiently enabling candidates to file lawsuits in federal court to ensure that the electoral slate a state sends to Washington, DC, accurately reflects the outcome of an election.

The bill also makes it more difficult for members of Congress to overturn an election, including clarifying the narrow grounds for objecting to electors. It also raises the threshold for bringing an objection to a state's electoral vote from one House member and one senator to one-third of each chamber, and increases the threshold for both chambers to sustain such an objection from a majority to three-fifths of both chambers.

Their bill further changes the presiding officer during the joint session — traditionally the vice president — to the Senate's president pro tempore, unless that person is a presidential or vice-presidential candidate. The legislation also reiterates that the vice president and presiding officer "have no power to resolve disputes over the list of Electors, the validity of Electors, or the validity of their votes."

Durbin, Klobuchar, and King may combine their efforts with a bipartisan group that's simultaneously examining the Electoral Count Act and mulling reforms to it.

"We stand ready to share the knowledge we have accumulated with our colleagues from both parties, and look forward to contributing to a strong, bipartisan effort aimed at resolving this issue and strengthening our democracy," the three senators said in a statement.

Members of the 16-member bipartisan group, led by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen. Susan Collins, met on Monday night to discuss broader election reform efforts. The group, whose members are all tasked with looking at different areas of election reform, plans to reconvene at the end of the week.

Manchin and Collins both told reporters that they expect the legislation to make it through the Rules Committee, which Klobuchar leads and King sits on.

Trump, for his part, has attacked the group's efforts and continued to repeat his false claims that Pence could have "sent back" slates of Biden electors to the states and should have "overturned" the 2020 election.

"I think it likely sort of increases the urgency to get something done here," Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the bipartisan working group, told reporters on Monday in light of Trump's comments. "But again, in order to pass it through the Senate, you're going to have to get support of Republicans who support President Trump."