U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy believes attempts to overturn the 2024 presidential election will be more “organized” and “sophisticated” than they were in 2020, which is why he joined bipartisan efforts to ensure a more peaceful transfer of power between presidents.
Murphy is one of 16 senators who worked together to craft compromise legislation reforming the century-old election recount law aimed at preventing future interference with the certification of election results.
In an interview Thursday, Murphy said he hoped there would be enough Republican support in the Senate to pass the compromise bill.
The two bills, which were introduced Wednesday, include a broad set of protections aimed at making it more difficult to challenge voters and clarifying the role of the vice president during the certification of congressional results, two issues that have arisen since the 2020 election. , when former President Donald Trump and his allies pressured Vice President Mike Pence to reject results showing a Joe Biden victory.
Those efforts ultimately failed, but not before a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, putting the vice president and lawmakers in danger. A special House committee is currently investigating the attack, what led up to it and the aftermath, and is holding its eighth public hearing Thursday night.
Murphy said his involvement in the group stems from his fear of potential threats the states could pose to the 2024 presidential election. The Supreme Court is set to hear a case in the fall that could give state legislatures more control over the elections.
The bipartisan coalition is led by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and includes an additional seven Republicans and seven Democrats.
“In 2024, the real threat will come from states that can reject election results and appoint their own electors,” Murphy said. “My main goal was to make sure there were new protections in the Election Counting Act to protect against bad state actors throwing out our election results.”
Like most bills coming before the 50-50 Senate, Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted. The party tried to pass a much larger voting rights bill last year that included restoring parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it stalled in the Senate over GOP objections. Reforming the Counting Act was one area of electoral reform that many in both parties could get behind, albeit with a much narrower focus.
Murphy and some Democrats in the caucus tried to include more “modest” provisions related to the Voting Rights Act in the new legislation. One of these included “clarification” of Section 2, which prohibits voting practices and laws from discriminating against voters based on race.
“I know there’s a lot of frustration, for good reason, that this bill doesn’t go further,” Murphy said, referring to what he’s heard from voting rights advocates. “Early in the process, there was some hope that we could include some improvements to the Voting Rights Act in this bill, and we were unable to reach agreement on those provisions.”
“I and others felt it was still worth moving forward with narrow reform of the Counting of Elections Act,” he added.
Both elements of the new legislation offer a fairly long list of reforms.
The first bill, among other things, establishes “expedited judicial review” to handle legal challenges to nominees and affirms that the vice president’s role is merely ceremonial in overseeing the congressional certification process.
It also includes a provision that would raise the threshold for challenging state election results, requiring one-fifth of MPs in both houses to do so. Currently, it takes one member of the House and Senate to raise an objection.
The other bill aims to increase security for election officials, candidates and voters who face threats of intimidation or violence, increasing the penalty to a maximum of two years in prison. It also reauthorizes the Independent Electoral Assistance Commission for five years and confirms that electronic election records must be preserved.
The proposed reforms are likely the only election-style legislation that could pass Congress, especially in the divided Senate, where some Republican support is needed. But Murphy said he felt “pretty confident” they would get the votes needed to pass it.
There are now eight GOP senators, meaning they only need two more Republican votes if all 50 Democrats support them. Most pieces of legislation must reach the 60-vote threshold to overcome a potential filibuster.
Besides Republicans in the bipartisan caucus, others in the GOP have expressed openness to the bill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, again indicated Wednesday that he might support it, telling a news conference that the 1887 law “needs to be fixed” and that he has been in “constant contact.” with Collins, the lead GOP negotiator.
It’s not yet clear how soon the Senate will move the legislation, especially with the month-long August recess approaching and a number of other high-priority bills on the deck, but Murphy said lawmakers should do so before the end of the year. Regardless of which party wins control of the House and Senate in November, Democrats will continue to control Congress until at least early January.
As Congress seeks to streamline the federal certification process, states are passing bills that strengthen or limit voting rights.
For a blue state, Connecticut has some of the more restrictive state voting laws in the country, though it relaxed them during the COVID-19 pandemic. Connecticut is one of 15 states that require an excuse to vote absentee. And it’s one of four states that doesn’t allow in-person early voting. However, the state offers voter registration on Election Day.
But Connecticut recently tried to expand voter access. In April, Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill expanding who can vote absentee. But there would need to be a constitutional amendment to make bigger changes to how the state conducts its elections.
“It’s definitely a little awkward to be on the front lines of pushing other states to keep their mail-in systems and their early voting systems when Connecticut doesn’t have one to boot,” Murphy said. “During the pandemic, we backtracked on a mailing system for emergency reasons.”
Murphy and others acknowledge that federal law isn’t perfect, and it will take everyone’s cooperation to prevent another Jan. 6.
Connecticut election experts say the compromise bills are a step in the right direction, though they say more may need to be done depending on what comes out of the remaining investigations on Jan. 6.
“As we continue to learn more about the events that unfolded on that day and led to that day through the congressional investigation or the DOJ investigation, Congress may have to go back to the drawing board and come up with other ways to improve this.” , said Gail Alberda, a professor of political science at Fairfield University.
But it appears that reforming the 1887 law may not be the only proposal coming from Congress. Two members of the committee since Jan. 6, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, released a joint statement saying they are considering “legislative recommendations,” noting that it would “include bipartisan approach to the Election Counting Act.’
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