{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=FFB39C6F-3158-4C46-A235-B4DC1ABF6FFA", "McConnell Announces Support for Bipartisan Update to Electoral Count Act", "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 on the Senate floor regarding the Electoral Count Act:\n\n\u201cThis afternoon, those of us on the Rules Committee will mark up a bipartisan package of updates to the Electoral Count Act of 1887.\n\n\u201cI strongly support the modest changes that our colleagues in the working group have fleshed out after months of detailed discussions.\n\n\u201cI will proudly support the legislation, provided that nothing more than technical changes are made to its current form.\n\n\u201cI want to thank Senator Collins and Senators Capito, Murkowski, Portman, Romney, Sasse, Tillis, and Young for their intense work with Democratic colleagues to get this right.\n\n\u201cCongress\u2019s process for counting the presidential electors\u2019 votes was written 135 years ago. The chaos that came to a head on January 6th of last year certainly underscored the need for an update. So did Januaries 2001, 2005, and 2017; in each of which, Democrats tried to challenge the lawful election of a Republican president.\n\n\u201cObviously, in every case, our system of government won out. The Electoral Count Act ultimately produced the right conclusion: Certainty, finality, and the transfer of power to the winning candidate. But it\u2019s clear the country needs a more predictable path to that outcome.\n\n\u201cThis bipartisan bill does not rashly replace current law with something untested. It keeps what\u2019s worked well and modestly updates what has not.\n\n\u201cThe bill\u2019s sponsors debated every provision and found bipartisan consensus. Bad ideas were left on the cutting room floor.\n\n\u201cThe resulting product \u2014 this bill, as introduced \u2014 is the only chance to get an outcome and make law.\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s what the legislation does.\n\n\u201cIt raises the threshold for objecting to the electoral count \u2014 preserving options if something incredibly unlikely were to happen, but ensuring claims with hardly any support can\u2019t paralyzing the process.\n\n\u201cIt makes the already plain fact of the 12th Amendment even clearer: that the Vice President has never had, and will never have, discretionary powers over the counting.\n\n\u201cIt protects states\u2019 primacy in appointing their electors, but ensures they publicize the rules before the election.\n\n\u201cIt rejects unwise changes like creating new causes of action that would leave every election up to the courts and create uncertainty.\n\n\u201cIt makes modest technical updates to other pertinent laws, such as the Presidential Transitions Act.\n\n\u201cAnd Senator Collins\u2019s bill does all these modest but important things without capitulating to our Democratic colleagues\u2019 obsession with a sweeping federal takeover of all election law.\n\n\u201cI look forward to supporting the legislation as introduced in committee.\u201d", 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=FFB39C6F-3158-4C46-A235-B4DC1ABF6FFA"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7541361264884472, "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"}