Source: United States Senator for Delaware Christopher Coons
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the group of bipartisan senators who worked to negotiate improvements to the Electoral Count Act and other laws to help guarantee a peaceful transition of power, issued the following statement today after the group released its draft proposal:
“I am proud to join a bipartisan group of senators in introducing legislation to safeguard American democracy, and I urge all of my colleagues to support these critical reforms. As a result of Donald Trump’s and his allies’ coordinated effort to undermine the results of the 2020 election, we came perilously close to seeing our democracy destroyed. We cannot forget that a group of bad actors could so easily undermine the peaceful transition of power that Americans have taken for granted for centuries. These bipartisan fixes to the Electoral Count Act will help close the loopholes that former President Trump and his associates attempted to exploit, including by clarifying that voters, and not the Vice President, select the next President of the United States of America and making it harder to launch frivolous and unfounded objections in Congress to states’ lawful electoral votes. Our reform of the Presidential Transition Act will also protect the critical administrative transition process from becoming a political battleground that can endanger our national security.
“The solutions we introduce today will accomplish necessary fixes to protect the fair and honest results of our elections, but the work to ensure that American democracy will last beyond the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren still continues. No one should mistake these critical reforms for the whole of what is needed: a lasting and comprehensive restoration of the Voting Rights Act, protection of the right to vote against attempts at suppression and subversion, and large-scale investment in our election infrastructure. Today’s legislation is a critical first step towards repairing damage to our democratic process and public confidence in our free and fair elections, and I am optimistic it will move forward in the days to come.”
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