Ret. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, whose public profile grew considerably due to his willingness as a then-federal official to share the truth around the time of Trump’s first impeachment, shared a call on Twitter this week for Americans to join in working to thwart the possibility of another January 6. Vindman’s comments — which he shared as the one-year anniversary of last January’s attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters quickly approached — included a link to a petition calling for the repeal and replacement of the Electoral Count Act, an old law that Trump allies used as a justification for their procedural attempts to stop the certification of Biden’s election win. Vindman commented as follows:
‘A year ago there was an attack on the Capitol to attempt to steal the ‘20 election. Join me in a campaign to defend democracy & tell me what 1/6 accountability means to you… Sign a petition to repeal the Electoral Count Act.’
Here's the link to the petition.https://t.co/fEd6i48V6z@Renew_Democracy
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) January 4, 2022
The law outlines the process for Congressional certifications of election outcomes, but it’s been criticized as vague. The House committee investigating the Capitol riot has been looking into the possibility of recommending legislative changes, and already, an entity called the National Task Force on Election Crises has promoted suggested changes including “limiting the grounds for a lawmaker to object to counting a state’s [electoral] votes and clarifying that the vice president’s role in the process is merely ministerial, and thus lacking the authority to unilaterally throw out a state’s votes,” as The New York Times explains.
Mike Pence should accept that he will never be the GOP nominee and start telling the truth about Trump, the January 6th insurrection and what happened at the Capitol that day.
— Chris Hahn (@ChristopherHahn) January 3, 2022
Under the law as it stands, members of Congress can object to the certification of results from individual states, although these objections can only move forward if at least one member of each chamber is in support. Eventually, though, a majority of each chamber can vote against the certification of certain electoral votes, if such an objection were to move ahead. A large number of House Republicans cast such votes during the certification process for Biden’s win, so what if they’d been in the majority? Their objections were not based in any kind of actual, documented problem with the election outcome, of course. Authorities at the federal and state levels had confirmed that no legitimate evidence of systematic fraud was present.
We’re still wondering why Donald Trump hasn’t faced criminal charges for literally inciting an insurrection.
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) January 4, 2022
As for the vice president’s part, Trump and others had pressured then-Vice President Pence to stop the certification of Biden’s win in his role overseeing the certification proceedings in Congress, although he didn’t actually have that legally recognized power — but currently in place legal provisions were unclear enough to help them claim that he did.
Guardian US: Jan. 6 committee is expecting a breakthrough with the Supreme Court, which experts believe will ensure the panel can access Trump White House records over the former president’s objections.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) January 4, 2022
