What can we do to ensure our elections are safe and trustworthy? What we know through the National Institute for Civil Discourse‘s CommonSense American program is that everyday citizens support legislation that will build trust in elections.
There are multiple ways we can improve our elections and we know there is broad, bipartisan support for these initiatives. Read our election brief results to see what Republicans, Democrats, and independent voters think!
We are grateful for the bipartisan efforts to address the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act. This effort has been led by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia. In a statement released by Senator Collins, she notes that “after months of bipartisan negotiations…two proposals were introduced which include legislation to reform and modernize the outdated Electoral Count Act of 1887 to ensure that the electoral votes tallied by Congress accurately reflect each state’s vote for President.”
“From the beginning, our bipartisan group has shared a vision of drafting legislation to fix the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887,” the senators said in a joint statement. “Through numerous meetings and debates among our colleagues as well as conversations with a wide variety of election experts and legal scholars, we have developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for President and Vice President. We urge our colleagues in both parties to support these simple, commonsense reforms.”
In addition to Senator Manchin, Democratic Senators include Mark Warner of Virginia, Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, Chris Coons of Delaware, Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
In addition to Senator Collins, Republican Senators include Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Todd Young of Indiana.
The grassroots support from CommonSense Americans highlights the bipartisan support for the efforts made by these senators to ensure we have elections that are trustworthy and recognized as the bedrock of democracy in the United States. To learn more and become involved with CommonSense American, visit https://www.commonsenseamerican.org/.