Representatives of the United States House of Representatives voted this Wednesday in favor of modernizing a 135-year-old law that Donald Trump allies tried to use to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

50 days before the midterm legislative elections in the United States, electoral reform projects reappeared in Congress, amid the wave of Republican candidates who still refuse to recognize Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.

The text removes all ambiguity in the Electoral Count Act (ECA) text on the vice president’s role in certifying presidential elections, limiting his role to a symbolic role. The ECA establishes how the electoral college results are counted state by state, as well as the number of congressmen needed to contest the electoral results of a state.

“This bill will prevent Congress from illegally choosing the president,” said Republican Liz Cheney, co-author of the text, who has a leading role in the Congressional investigation into Trump’s actions before and during last year’s violence.

The text passed by 229 votes (with the support of all Democrats) to 203, but seems unlikely to prevail in upcoming negotiations to merge the legislation with a more restricted version of the Senate, which appears to already have the Republican support needed to reach the Senate Biden’s table.

No effort is as comprehensive as the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which fell because of a Republican blockade in the Senate.

Progressive Democrats see the latest initiative as a weak replacement for these bills, which aimed to introduce restrictive voting laws in Republican-led states.

Source: With Agencies