Former Senator Tim Wirth and I wrote a column recently on how a Republican landslide in the House of Representatives races this fall will create a very clear path for Donald Trump to be re-elected president of the United States. Not that I think Donald Trump would win the popular vote, or even achieve an Electoral College victory, but instead, if the majority of the House ends up being Big Lie adherents, a Kevin McCarthy-led House would maneuver through our electoral process loopholes to deliver the presidency to Trump.
While it is heartening to see that a bipartisan group of senators have come forward with a package of amendments to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887 that would close some of these loopholes, these reforms will not cut off the high probability that cheerleaders for the Big Lie in both houses will still be able to prevail. The major proposed reform would require 20 percent of the House and the Senate to object to certification of any state’s Electoral College slate, as opposed to only one House member and one senator under the Act today. This is probably still not a high enough threshold to keep the 2024 election from being thrown into the House of Representatives where a state-by-state delegation vote would be able to clearly deliver the presidency to Donald Trump.