{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=DDEE9542-CE25-469F-847B-782C35A35A92", "McConnell Remarks at Rules Committee on \u201cCommon Sense\u201d Electoral Count Act Updates", "2022-09-27", "2022", "2022-09", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today at the Senate Rules Committee hearing regarding the Electoral Count Act:\n\n\u201cI\u2019m pleased that we are where we are today. We\u2019re here to consider legislation that is necessarily detailed and complex. But the reason we are here is simple: After 150 years, the Electoral Count Act needs some modest updates.\n\n\u201cThose of us on this committee know it. I believe that all our colleagues in the Senate know it. And the American people certainly know it.\n\n\u201cNow, clearly, when a 150-year-old law has successfully brought us certainty, finality, and one orderly presidential inauguration after another, we need to be delicate and careful with any changes.\n\n\u201cBut the chaos that came to a head on January 6th of last year strongly suggests that we find careful ways to clarify and streamline the process.\n\n\u201cAnd so does what happened in January 2001, January 2005, and January 2017.\n\n\u201cFor more than 20 years now, every time voters pick a Republican president, we\u2019ve seen at least some Democrats in Congress resist the people\u2019s decision and try to challenge the electoral count.\n\n\u201cSo the situation called for careful, methodical, and bipartisan work\u2026 to arrive at a careful, methodical, and bipartisan product.\n\n\u201cIt is clear that only a bipartisan compromise originating in the Senate can actually become law. One party going it alone would be a non-starter. In my view, the House bill is a non-starter.\n\n\u201cWe had one shot to get this right.\n\n\u201cAnd fortunately for all of us, fortunately for the country, an outstanding working group of Senators rolled up their sleeves.\n\n\u201cI want to especially thank Senator Collins for her leadership. Senator Blunt, for his commitment. Senators Capito, Murkowski, Portman, Romney, Sasse, Tillis, and Young were also instrumental on our side of the aisle.\n\n\u201cObviously their Democratic counterparts worked hard to make this happen, as well.\n\n\u201cI strongly support the Collins legislation as introduced.\n\n\u201cAnd assuming that we make no changes here today \u2014 or at most technical changes \u2014 I will be proud to vote to advance it.\n\n***\n\n\u201cThe substance of this bill is common sense.\n\n\u201cIt is common sense to modestly increase, as others have said here, the threshold for objections to the electoral count \u2014 so that Congress still has options in case of truly extraordinary circumstances, but we avoid an arms race where objections with almost no support paralyze the process every four years.\n\n\u201cIt is common sense to make the already clear fact of the 12th Amendment even clearer still: That the Vice President obviously has no personal discretionary power over the presidential vote.\n\n\u201cIt is common sense to protect states\u2019 primacy in appointing their electors, but also strengthen requirements that states publicize their rules before the elections and then stick to them.\n\n\u201cIt is common sense to make technical fixes to other related laws like the Presidential Transitions Act.\n\n\u201cAnd it is common sense that our colleagues left chaos-generating bad ideas on the cutting room floor \u2014 like a massive federal takeover of election law, or inventing new causes of action for litigation that would throw every election into the courts.\n\n\u201cThe legislation before us, with this text, in this form, is Congress\u2019s one option to get an outcome.\n\n\u201cAnd in my view, this is not an opportunity we should pass up.\n\n\u201cSo in closing, I want to again thank my colleagues for their many weeks of hard work on this.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s preserve the legislation as introduced and report out this important bill.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:29:59Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=DDEE9542-CE25-469F-847B-782C35A35A92"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.3273481745272875, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}