ELECTION INTEGRITYHeading Off a Future Constitutional Calamity

By Christopher M. Tuttle

As Congress prepared to leave town for the now-concluded summer recess—and the bulk of political news coverage largely focused on legislative maneuvering surrounding the massive budget reconciliation bill—the Senate Rules and Administration Committee held a hearing on what is arguably the most important legislation of the soon-to-be-adjourned 117^th Congress.

I don’t typically recommend congressional hearings as preferred viewing to anyone but my fellow C-SPAN nerds, but this one, on the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act (ECRA), is worth a watch, if only for a few minutes. Granted, for most, listening to constitutional experts delve into the history of the 1876 Hayes versus Tilden presidential contest and the intricacies of expedited judicial procedures is about as alluring as watching paint dry. But there was more to the hearing than the legislation itself. If you’re like most Americans, your faith in institutions is as low, or lower, than it has ever been. Obviously, no single event can remedy that, but the hearing offers an exceptional display, in today’s terms, of real bipartisan progress being made on a truly critical issue.

The story of the 2020 election and its aftermath has been retold daily in the mass media for nearly two years, so a detailed recitation of it again here would be superfluous. That a candidate would question the results of a presidential contest is actually nothing new. It’s happened before—several times, in fact. Federal statutes can’t prevent candidates from denying election results, but they should stop losing candidates from operationalizing that denial with the force of law. The events of early 2021 laid bare the reality that what most assumed was a rock-solid protective firewall against such action was not as airtight as they thought, and that without changes, a future constitutional crisis could threaten the existence of the republic.