Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am pleased to join my close friend and dear colleague Senator Manchin in introducing bipartisan legislation to reform the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887, the important law that governs how Congress tallies each State's electoral votes for President and Vice President. On January 6 of 2017, I was amused to learn that I had received one electoral vote for Vice President of the United States, an office for which I obviously was not a candidate. But on January 6, 2021, I realized that my unearned vote from 4 years earlier was really not funny at all. Rather, it was an indication of deep structural problems with our system of certifying and counting the electoral votes for President and Vice President. These unfortunate flaws are codified in the 1887 Electoral Count Act. In four of the past six Presidential elections, this process has been abused, with Members of both parties raising frivolous objections to electoral votes. But it took the violent breach of the Capitol on January 6 of 2021 to really shine a spotlight on the urgent need for reform. Over the past several months, Senator Manchin and I have worked with a terrific, bipartisan group of Senators who are united in our determination to prevent the flaws in this 135-year-old law from being used to undermine future Presidential elections.…”