U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is a member of a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators working on strengthening the law to ensure that the vice president has no legal authority to question an electoral college vote count.
There is a need to push back on Republicans and former President Donald Trump’s claim that Mike Pence had the authority to overturn the electoral college vote count in the 2020 presidential election, said Murphy, who is a Democrat.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887 does not give a vice president such authority, he said.
“The language is pretty clear. But we can make it clearer. We can make it absolutely watertight that the vice president can not do anything other than open up those votes,” Murphy said.
The group of seven Republican and six Democratic U.S. Senators working to reform the Electoral College Act have the backing of the Senate leadership, said Murphy.
The hope is that their reforms would strengthen American democracy ahead of the 2024 presidential election, he said.
