Experts hope this law could save America from Trump election chaos

Former President Donald Trump may not be in office for the 2024 election, but many of his most loyal supporters remain in Congress and could try to reject the electoral count the same way they tried to do so in 2020.

But there's another big difference from the 2020 presidential election, wrote Andy Craig of the Institute for Humane Studies for MSNBC — the Electoral Count Reform Act.

This oft-forgotten piece of legislation, one of many bipartisan reforms passed by Congress under the Biden administration, was designed specifically to prevent the kind of scheme Trump attempted, in which the vice president would use sets of "alternate electors" the Trump team declared in battleground states as an excuse to void the real electors and throw the presidential election to the House.

Former Vice President Mike Pence ultimately didn't go along with this after the 2020 vote, believing it to be unconstitutional, which permanently estranged him from the Trump camp. But with the passage of ECRA, it was codified as explicitly illegal. And it does this, wrote Craig, by addressing all the supposed legal defects Trump's team invoked to argue states couldn't certify their own results.

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"Under the newly reformed federal law, Election Day is defined as the usual date, except that voting may be extended 'as necessitated by force majeure events that are extraordinary and catastrophic,'" wrote Craig — a reference to how states granted extra voting time based on the COVID pandemic. It also sets up a three-judge panel to handle any dispute over how votes are counted, streamlining court fights that took place in 2020 and also in 2000. And it clarifies that the vice president's role over the electoral count is purely ministerial.

There are still some potential legal hurdles that could cause the Supreme Court to step in to an electoral dispute — but ultimately, Craig wrote, the process is harder to interfere in than it was last time.

"Once this process is complete — state laws implementing a popular election for members of the Electoral College, courts deciding any disputes over the outcome of those elections, the duly appointed electors meeting and casting their votes, and Congress counting the electoral votes — the winner will be sworn in at noon on Jan. 20, a date and time set in stone by the 20th Amendment," he concluded.