Breathe a sigh of relief over the omnibus version of the Electoral Count Act

I agree entirely with John McCormack and Ben Sasse that it is good to see Electoral Count Act reform coming to a vote in Congress, bad to see it stuffed into the omnibus bill, and shameful on the part of Chuck Schumer that he obstructed all efforts to get a stand-alone bill to the Senate floor where it had sufficient bipartisan support to pass.

Based on the current text of the bill, which buries the ECA provisions on pages 1,934 through 1,954 of a 4,155-page tome, it appears that the Senate’s version of ECA reform has been adopted (for example, the bill now requires one-fifth, not one-third, of Congress to raise an objection: a higher standard than under current law but lower than the House version), and the criticisms of the bill lodged in National Review‘s September editorial have been resolved. The bill can no longer be read to create any new federal rights to sue, either in federal court or anywhere else. To the contrary …