This is a very good set of reforms. The bulk of them are directed to avoiding a repeat of the sorts of problems we saw in 2020 — a situation in which the states all did their jobs but members of Congress, at the behest of the defeated incumbent president, moved to sow doubt about the outcome by capitalizing on the vagueness and looseness of the ECA. Because the bad actors in that case were in Congress, there is a fair amount of room for Congress to address the problems revealed in the process. Most of the provisions of the ECA function in effect as a set of House and Senate rules, and indeed are adopted as such by both houses every four years, and so revising them is well within the purview of the Congress.

Concerns about the potential for misbehavior in the states — driven by the fact that some people who insist the last election was stolen are now running for positions with authority over election administration in a number of states — are harder to address through federal law, and this proposed legislation accepts that reality. It would take some limited actions that are clearly within Congress’s power, like assigning the job of certifying electors to the governor in the absence of a clear state law assigning that power to someone else. This could help reduce the opportunities for misbehavior by state officials (unless, of course, the governor is the person who misbehaves), and could also make it easier for state and federal courts to quickly resolve uncertainties and disputes in the wake of an election.

Some Democrats wanted to go further, and give the federal courts more jurisdiction over the ways in which state officials enforce state election laws. This was a disastrously misguided idea, and it is very good that this proposal avoids any such path. This is a significant success for a number of Republicans who fought hard against that approach — particularly Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney. And it is the reason why I think this bill could get enough Republican votes to pass the Senate. The restraint shown in this proposal suggests this bipartisan group really wants to get these reforms enacted.