Stop sedition! Vote! to kick out the seditionists!

Thank you to the San Diego Union-Tribune and the editor Chris Reed for this echo opinion!

Fed up by the four (IMO miserable !) years of Donald Trump and eight years of what they perceived as Barack Obama’s cautious moderation, progressive Democrats reacted to their party’s taking control of the White House and Congress last winter with the belief they had a mandate for massive change.

A perfect example was the revised version of the For the People Act. With at least 19 Republican-controlled state legislatures taking steps to make voting more difficult, Democrats stood up for the right to vote. The bill would take unprecedented steps to roll back GOP moves to limit early and absentee voting and to shut down many polls and limit their hours.

But the measure, which passed in the House on a near party-line vote in March, also included many provisions that had nothing to do with voting rights and everything to do with political power. 

Moreover, the For the People Act targets the Supreme Court’s 2010, Citizens United decision saying corporations (and labor unions) have free speech rights that allow them to spend as much as they want on independent political action committees. Specifically, it requires the disclosure of donors to such committees. The American Civil Liberties Union said this “could harm political advocacy and expose nonprofit donors to harassment and threats of violence should their support for organizations be subject to forced disclosure.” 

So, the For the People Act would also set up direct public financing for congressional campaigns.

Now, both these ideas may have broad appeal to Americans who believe corporations have too much clout. But you don’t have to be a Republican partisan to see the proposals as about changing the basics of political speech rights and campaign financing to help one side over the other. Unlike sticking up for voting rights, this doesn’t seem inherently idealistic at all. Instead, its motivating spirit is not that different from, well, making voting more difficult: the pursuit of power.

But whatever their merits, the For the People Act and the related John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act are unlikely to ever pass the Senate unless filibuster rules are changed. The left’s anger with filibuster defenders Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona, isn’t changing their minds.

What’s needed is a mature appreciation that politics is the art of the possible. It’s also time for people to figure out that Trump and some other Republicans’ open interest in manipulating election results is a much more immediate and dangerous threat to U.S. democracy than limiting access to voting. Here’s how Trump put it Jan. 16: “Sometimes the vote-counter is more important than the candidate.” Unless you believe Trump’s hallucinatory claim that he was the victim of mass election fraud in 2020, that’s chilling.

This is why a powerful case can be made that the most important proposal before Congress is to overhaul the Electoral Count Act of 1887, a murky law about the vice president’s and Congress’ duties in certifying presidential elections. First disclosed by Axios on Jan. 6 — fittingly, the anniversary of the Trump riot at the Capitol — it would clear up the idea that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority during the Senate certification process to reject electoral votes submitted by states, as Trump wanted him to do. 

Capitol mob built gallows and chanted ‘Hang Mike Pence’

In fact, if Pence had done this (IMO seditious act!), nearly all scholars believe that the courts would have reversed the decision.

But there are two other loopholes that appear legal that offer tremendous opportunities for mischief. 

Yale Law School’s Matthew Seligman says the Electoral Count Act would theoretically allow a party that controlled both chambers of Congress to disregard election results and install one of its own in the White House. The law also says that Congress must accept the slate of electors designated as correct by a governor — whatever the election results — if a legislature sent the governor an alternative list. “We are at catastrophic risk in the next election and beyond,” Seligman told Yahoo News.

It’s vitally important to shore up election integrity soon. One obvious idea is setting up strong standards to ensure state election officials have only a ministerial role in counting votes — not the ability to “find 11,780 votes,” as Trump (IMO illegally!)asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to do.

The good news for America is that there is actually a chance election reform could pass on a bipartisan Senate vote. According to reports, Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Steve Daines of Montana have been meeting with Democratic Sens. Manchin, Sinema, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Tim Kaine of Virginia on the topic. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is even reportedly interested, according to Vox.

But the bad news, alas, is that Vox also reported that some progressives see this issue as less important than the For the People Act. This is hard to follow. If progressives succeed in making it easier to vote, but Trumpians in state governments and Congress use loopholes to throw out voting results, what have progressives accomplished?

Promoting voting is a noble goal. 

Preventing sedition is an urgent one.

Mr. Chris Reed is the deputy editor of the editorial and opinion section of the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper, in California.