WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a strong bipartisan vote of 14-1, the Senate Rules Committee advanced the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA) in the legislative process yesterday afternoon. The bill was supported by both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). In its current form, the ECRA has 11 Republican cosponsors and 11 Democratic cosponsors.

Trevor Potter, founder and president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Republican Former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, issued the following statement:

“The bipartisan nature of this proposal to bring the Electoral Count Act into the 21st century is significant and historic. It’s notable that in the last week, both chambers of Congress have taken significant steps toward updating the ECA. We commend the bipartisan, bicameral efforts that are underway to address this archaic law’s most serious vulnerabilities. We now call on members of the Senate and House to work together to come to a consensus and enact the strongest possible legislation before the end of the year. Partisan actors are already laying the groundwork to succeed where they failed in 2020, seeking opportunities to change the rules when election outcomes do not align with their goals. With the 2024 presidential election right around the corner, time is running out. An updated ECA is urgently needed to protect the will of the people. Congress must meet this moment.”

The Electoral Count Act (ECA) has not been updated since it was first enacted more than 130 years ago, and it is rife with imprecise language, gaps and ambiguities that partisan actors attempted to exploit as part of an organized effort to overturn the 2020 election. Although this plan failed, the obscure language of the ECA remains ripe for manipulation.

ATLANTA, GA. – The state of Georgia has agreed to resolve the claims of plaintiff VoteAmerica, a civic engagement group, in a federal lawsuit filed by Campaign Legal Center against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The resolution of these claims affirms that the anti-voter law S.B. 202’s restrictions on absentee ballot application distribution do not apply to voter engagement tools like VoteAmerica’s, which requires the voter themselves to initiate the request to the third-party organization for an absentee ballot application. The agreed upon stipulation of dismissal, filed with the court yesterday, effectively allows VoteAmerica to proceed with their voter engagement model as is.  

Signed into law in 2021, S.B. 202 limits the ability of nonprofit civic engagement organizations to distribute absentee ballot applications to Georgia voters in violation of the First Amendment. CLC, along with the law firm Smith, Gambrell, and Russell LLP, continues to challenge the law as the case moves forward with remaining plaintiffs Voter Participation Center and the Center for Voter Information, who have a different approach to voter engagement than VoteAmerica and continue to be directly impacted by the burdensome prohibitions of S.B. 202.  

“This is a victory for Georgia voters and for VoteAmerica, even as we keep fighting in the courts for groups still negatively impacted by S.B. 202,” said Danielle Lang, senior director for voting rights at Campaign Legal Center. “We look forward to coordinating with our partners in Georgia to help inform and educate other organizations with models like VoteAmerica’s that they can continue their voter outreach efforts. The collective work of these organizations to assist voters and strengthen our democracy should be commended instead of being called into question or halted by frivolous, anti-voter laws.” 

"The team at VoteAmerica is celebrating this win for voters," says Daniel McCarthy, VP of Finance and Operations for VoteAmerica. "VoteAmerica stands firmly in its position that Georgia's interference in our association with and assistance to Georgia voters who request it is anti-democratic and unconstitutional. VoteAmerica will continue to pursue just fights with any state that stands in the way of our mission to support all eligible voters, to increase voter turnout and to strengthen American democracy."

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Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC), and a Republican Former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), released the following statement:

 

“Today, the United States Senate once again failed to advance, or even allow debate on, the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act. This failure, coming despite a decade of tireless work from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the bill’s lead sponsor, disappoints those of us who have been fighting against the influence of secret spending.


 

More importantly, it deprives voters of important information about who is attempting to influence their vote and allows corruption to prevail by permitting special interests to continue anonymously rigging the system in their favor.


 

It is past time for Congress to enact legislation that bolsters transparency requirements and fulfills voters’ right to know who is spending on election influence – a right that has repeatedly been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, even as the Court has struck down other campaign finance and election-related laws.


 

Special interests may prefer secret election spending through opaque nonprofit groups because they can run political ads that mislead and manipulate voters without being accountable for those messages. But voters need to know who is funding these ads so they can weigh their credibility and cast an informed vote. As the late Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, ‘The premise of the First Amendment is that the American people are neither sheep nor fools, and hence fully capable of considering both the substance of the speech presented to them and its proximate and ultimate source.’


 

It is time Congress took that premise to heart.”

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 8873 to update the Electoral Count Act (ECA), the outdated law that provides the primary framework governing how presidential electoral votes are cast and counted. Bad actors exploited ambiguities in the ECA in 2020 in an attempt to overturn the election results. 

Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Liz Cheney (R-WY)  introduced the Presidential Election Reform Act (PERA) this week. Rep. Lofgren chairs the House Administration Committee and both Reps. Cheney and Lofgren sit on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack. 

In July, a bipartisan group of 16 Senators introduced the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA) (S. 4573), which is currently under consideration in the Senate and would update the ECA to prevent partisan politicians from manipulating presidential elections. 

Trevor Potter, founder and president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Republican Former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, issued the following statement:

“Today’s vote in the House of Representatives demonstrates the bipartisan, bicameral recognition of the urgent need to improve the Electoral Count Act. This law has not been updated since its enactment more than 130 years ago and is rife with gaps and ambiguities that open the door for bad actors seeking to manipulate our presidential elections. We thank Reps. Lofgren and Cheney for developing this proposal, and we commend the House for taking swift action on this critical issue. With a serious bipartisan effort rapidly advancing in the Senate, we call on lawmakers in both chambers to pass the strongest possible legislation that can become law before the end of this year. The next presidential election could be one of the most contentious ever, which is why the time to update the Electoral Count Act is now. Our democracy depends on it.”

Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC), and a Republican Former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), released the following statement: 

“This week, the Senate will hold a procedural vote to open debate on the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act – a bill that is crucial to the First Amendment right of all Americans to have our voices heard. Since my time with the FEC, the amount of money spent by corporations and other special interests seeking to influence our elections has risen dramatically, with much of that spending coming from donors who deliberately hide their identities from voters and the public at large. 
 

Voters have a fundamental right to know who is spending money to influence our elections – knowledge regarding who is funding political ads allows us to weigh their credibility and cast an informed vote. Secret spending, sometimes known as “dark money,” undermines voters’ right to information necessary to meaningfully participate in the democratic process - a right identified by the Supreme Court in their ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This is why the need for the DISCLOSE Act is so great and so urgent. This bill would mandate transparency from 501(c)(4) organizations and other entities that seek to influence our vote (by directly spending on political ads or funding super PACs that do so) while concealing their true funding sources. 

As the Senate moves toward this procedural vote, I urge every single member of the chamber to vote in the affirmative and advance this bill. American voters deserve transparency in their elections, and they deserve a public debate on this long overdue legislation.”