Former President Trump's criticism of efforts to change an arcane election law are adding new urgency - and uncertainty - into bipartisan negotiations in the Senate.
Stickers are seen at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday, November 2, 2021. Virginia is voting for governor, state house and senate races.
"The statements that President Trump put out on the Electoral Count Act only underscores the need for us to remove any ambiguity that exists in the act, which is poorly drafted and has not been revised since it was passed in 1887," said GOP Sen. Susan Collins , who was mocked by Trump as "Wacky Susan Collins."
The group is discussing codifying that the vice president's role in Congress's formal counting of the Electoral College votes is ceremonial, after Trump led a pressure campaign to try to get Pence to act unilaterally. They are also looking at increasing the number of lawmakers that must sign on to an objection before they can force a vote in both the House and Senate.
"The best way to characterize how I feel about the Electoral Count Act is that it is flawed and does need to be fixed," McConnell told reporters. "I think the advantage of this moment is that the vice president is a Democrat, so hopefully Republicans recognize that clarifying the role of the vice president is in our interest as well as in the other party's interest," he said.
Klobuchar and Sen. Roy Blunt , the top Republican on the Rules Committee, also met with members of the bipartisan group. If the Collins-Manchin group can get a deal the bill is expected to also go through the Rules Committee. "That's not going anywhere with our Republicans. ...It goes way farther than what most of our members in that working group are talking about," Thune said. "I just think that the whole purpose of having a work group is to try to get a bipartisan product and this really ... steps on that."
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