Trump Attack Puts New Focus on Bipartisan Election Law Effort

(Bloomberg) -- Senators' efforts to overhaul a 135-year-old law governing Congress's role in certifying an election has received new attention after former President Donald Trump attacked Mike Pence for refusing to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump said in a statement Sunday that the effort to revise the law shows that Pence, then the vice president, did have the authority to overturn the election during the congressional counting of the Electoral College votes -- a claim disputed by even Trump's allies on Capitol Hill. Trump also criticized Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who has led the effort to overhaul the law.

“To me, President Trump's comments underscore the need for us to revise the Electoral Count Act because they demonstrated the confusion in the law and the fact that it is ambiguous,” Collins told reporters at the Capitol. “I think the 12th Amendment's pretty clear, but the Electoral Count Act, which was written in 1887, clearly needs to be revised.”

The Collins-led effort comes after a Democrat-only push to overhaul election laws stalled in the Senate earlier this month.

The bipartisan group is also considering legislation protecting election workers from threats and attacks, as well as a new round of election grants.

The group met Monday night at the Capitol and planned to break into smaller groups to discuss different pieces of the legislation, Senators Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, told reporters.

Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and has separately been working on the issue, said everyone thinks the law is “confusing, vague and an invitation to problems and issues and we just want to try and clarify it.”

Earlier: GOP's Graham Calls Out Trump on Pardons for Jan. 6 Rioters

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has also been open to revising the law.

Others remain reluctant.

Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota said he isn't yet convinced any major changes are needed, despite Trump's comments.

“The law worked the way that it was supposed to work. Mike Pence did what he was supposed to do,” he said. “Mike Pence should be recognized for, under very challenging circumstances, doing exactly what the vice president or the president of the Senate was supposed to do in that situation.”

Other Republicans said they know of no senator who agrees with Trump's view that Pence could have overturned the election on his own.

“I do not think that and did not at the time,” said Josh Hawley of Missouri, the first senator to announce he would challenge states' Electoral College votes. “I don't think that's a fair reading of the statute.”

Hawley said he would look at what proposals but would be “very careful about making a lot of changes.”

Pardon Controversy

Several Republican senators also disagreed with Trump dangling pardons, should he again be elected president, for people charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump raised the possibility of pardons at a rally in Texas on Saturday.

Murkowski said “Those people that came into this building, defiled this place, threatened not only the institution itself, deserve to be in jail, they don't deserve to be pardoned.”

Hawley also opposed pardons.

“Folks who committed crimes, actual crimes, they ought to be prosecuted,” Hawley said. “You know, if you commit crime and assault officers and whatever, you ought to pay the penalty for that,” he added.