The first presidential election since the Jan. 6 attack will test new congressional guardrails

WASHINGTON – This presidential election, the first since the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, will be a stress test for the new systems and guardrails Congress has put in place to safeguard America’s long tradition of peaceful transfer of presidential power.

As Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris race to the finish line, democracy advocates and elected officials are preparing for a volatile period in the aftermath of Election Day, as legal challenges are filed, bad actors spread disinformation and voters wait for the Congress confirms this. the results.

“One of the unusual features of this election is that so much of the potential danger and so much of the attack on the election system is focused on the post-election period,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the nonpartisan Brennan Center . for Justice.

After the January 6 attack, Congress wanted to strengthen the process and prevent a repeat of that unprecedented period in which Trump, joined by some Republican allies in Congress, refused to concede defeat to President Joe Biden. Trump pushed dozens of failed lawsuits for months before sending his supporters to the US Capitol, where they disrupted the electoral count in a bloody riot. He faces a federal charge over the scheme, in which fake electors from states falsely claim he won.

While the new electoral count reform law passed by Congress has clarified post-election processes – to more quickly resolve legal challenges and reinforce the vice president’s inability to change the election outcome on January 6 – the new law is by no means ironclad.

Much depends on the people involved, from the winners and losers of the presidential election to the elected leaders in Congress and the voters across America who put their trust in the democratic system that has existed for more than 200 years.

Voters are concerned about the unrest after the elections

A poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that American voters are approaching the election with great anxiety about what might follow.

Dick Gephardt, the former leader of the House of Representatives, now serves on the board of directors of the nonpartisan Keep our Republic, which has worked to provide citizen education about the process in the presidential battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“We are only concerned about one thing: Can Americans still have valid confidence in elections and can we consistently achieve a peaceful transition of power in all offices, including the presidency?” Gephardt said in a briefing earlier this month.

“January 6, 2021, I think, was really a wake-up call for all of us,” he said.

It’s not just the flood of legal challenges that has democracy groups concerned, as dozens of cases have been filed by both Republicans and Democrats before Election Day. They say the sheer number of cases has the potential to cast doubt on election tallies and give rise to disinformation, both domestic and foreign, as happened in 2020 when Trump’s legal team laid out widespread theories that turned out to be wildly inaccurate.

As Trump moves to retake the White House, he is already setting the stage for challenges to an election he wants to be “too big to rig.” The Republican National Committee has made legal strategy a cornerstone of its election integrity program.

Trump is backed by Republicans on Capitol Hill, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has adopted similar language saying he would only accept the results if the election is free and fair.

“We’re going to have a peaceful transition of power,” Johnson, who led one of Trump’s 2020 legal challenges, told CBS. “I believe President Trump is going to win, and that will be taken care of.”

A specific line of attack from Republicans in the House of Representatives has been to suggest that illegal voting by non-citizens will occur, even though it is a crime to do so, and according to state and federal assessments, this is extremely rare. Johnson has pointed to previous House races, including one in Iowa in 2020 that was won by six votes, to reinforce his concerns.

Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said Johnson is “saying the quiet part out loud,” indicating how Republicans could cast doubt on the outcome.

That worries me, he said.

What happens between election and inauguration?

At the Brennan Center, they have been running war-game-like scenarios for what might happen after the election, at a time when state election officials are dealing with a resurgence of conspiracy theories and misinformation about voting.

A series of deadlines between Election Day on November 5 and Inauguration Day on January 20 are built into the process, once routine steps that are now important milestones that can be met – or missed.

States are required to certify their electors by December 11, ahead of an Electoral College meeting, which will take place on December 17 this year.

The new Congress will convene on January 3 to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives and swear in lawmakers. Congress will then hold a joint session on January 6 to accept the states’ election results – a typically ceremonial session presided over by the vice president.

To strengthen the process in the wake of the January 6 attack, the Electoral Count Reform Act made several changes intended to strengthen the process and ensure that disputes are resolved by the time Congress convenes. Legal issues relating to the results must be resolved more quickly, within an accelerated timeline for judicial review, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. If a county refuses to release its results, as some did in the 2022 midterm elections, the governor has more authority to certify the state’s numbers.

On January 6, the law now requires 20% of the House and Senate to challenge a state’s voters to force a vote on its rejection, instead of a one-member-per-chamber threshold.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who had been the chief architect of the new law along with Republican Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said they did “the best we could” to protect the process.

“You know that people have the right, if they have a problem with the election, to go to court and be heard,” Lofgren said. “The point is, once that’s over, it’s over.”