She has been dancing on the edge of the great Democrat-GOP divide with a substantial group of bipartisan senators. The Republican senator from Maine Susan Collins pointed to an election law still on the books from 1887 about counting Electoral College votes. In her opinion piece in The New York Times, she wrote that the “peaceful transfer of power shouldn’t require heroes.”
Collins has been standing right beside Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) in the 16-senator bipartisan group as they try to reform the Electoral Count Act. Their effort has been to correct a January 6, 2020 repeat. She wrote:
‘[O]n Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob overran the Capitol, I realized that my unearned vote in the Electoral College was not amusing. This seemingly innocuous vote was an indication that our system of counting and certifying votes for president and vice president had deep and serious structural problems.’
After Trump lost in 2020, he worked incessantly to coerce his own Vice President Mike Pence to toss out the Electoral vote. The vice president upon the advice of experts he respected said “no.”
Collins wrote on Friday:Â
‘The ambiguously phrased Electoral Count Act must be amended to make absolutely clear that a vice president cannot manipulate or ignore electoral votes as he or she presides over this joint session of Congress. But other flaws in the law must also be remedied.’
She continued, pointing out that the law has been too weak:
‘For instance, the law’s threshold for triggering a challenge to the results of a state is far too low: Only one representative and one senator are required to object to a state’s electors. In the past, members on both sides of the aisle have challenged the vote without any real evidence of wrongdoing.’
But she added, the bipartisan group needed to watch how they wrote the legislation in order to prevent “partisan provisions:”
‘We have to be careful about expanding a reform bill to include provisions that go well beyond correcting the current law, strengthening election security and protecting poll workers from threats of violence. Relitigating bills that have already been rejected won’t get us to the finish line. Our primary focus must be on avoiding another Jan. 6 by reforming the Electoral Count Act.’
Collins also denounced the former president and his advisors. She said:
‘[Trump] exploited the weaknesses of the law and ignored the language of the Constitution.’
Collins noted that a “peaceful transfer of power shouldn’t require heroes” as January 6 of 2020 had:
‘Pence’s courage and integrity cannot be overstated [and] the peaceful transfer of power shouldn’t require heroes.’
Only seven GOP senators voted to impeach Trump in 2021. Collins was one of them. And she pointed to one of the ex-president’s statements on Monday, saying it was “absolutely atrocious.”
Three White Lions political book, now available on Amazon’s Kindle-Vella. She also writes for the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletter for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery (in process). Find her here on Facebook.
