U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is pushing new legislation to guard against attempts to overturn the results of a presidential election.
It’s aimed at reforming the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which created the electoral college, said Murphy, one of 16 Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate who crafted the bill.
“The law is incomplete, it's ambiguous, and its weakness was part of the reason why Donald Trump thought he could steal the election in 2020,” he said.
The new legislation has barriers to prevent the popular vote in a presidential election from being overturned by either Congress or a state legislature, Murphy said.
“There’s probably 60 votes in the Senate. Speaker Nancy Pelosi would likely call it for a vote in the House. There’s no guarantee of that next year,” Murphy said. That’s because control of the Congress next year will depend on the outcome of November’s election.
