Friday’s final passage of legislation to amend the obscure law that regulates certification of presidential contests was the most significant effort to prevent another Donald Trump-inflaming attempt to reverse his defeat in 2020.

After the Senate approved the same wording on Thursday, the House approved an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act. President Joe Biden will now sign the legislation.

Biden, in a Friday statement, praised the inclusion of the spending bill provisions and called it “critical bipartisan action that will ensure that the will to the people is maintained.”

This is the most significant legislative response Congress has yet made to Trump’s aggressive attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. It was also a step that was urged by the House Select Committee that carried out the most thorough investigation into Trump’s violent seizure of the Capitol.

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Bipartisan support was given to the amendments to the 1887 law, long criticized for being poorly and confusingly written. This would make it more difficult for future presidential losers in order to prevent the ascension by their foes as Trump attempted to do on January 6, 2021.

Rick Hasen, a University of California Los Angeles law professor, said, “It’s an enormous accomplishment, especially in this partisan atmosphere for such a major revision of a law so crucial to our democracy.” “This law is a significant step in closing down the avenues Trump’s allies attempted to use in 2020. It could have been used in future elections.”

Trump attacked Congress’ ratification for the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6. To get Mike Pence to stop Biden becoming the next president, Trump tried to use the vice president’s role reading out the electors of the states to get Mike Pence to ignore some states Biden had won from the roll. These new provisions clarify that the vice presidency’s role in this process is purely ceremonial, and that the vice-president has no influence on who wins the election.

The threshold for Congress members to object to the certification of electors is raised by the new legislation. Prior to the new legislation, one member of each the House and Senate had to object to a roll-call vote on a state’s electors. This made objections to new presidents a routine partisan tactic. Democrats objected in 2016 to the certification of both George W. Bush’s and Trump’s election.

These objections were symbolic in nature and came after Democrats conceded that the Republican candidates had won the presidency. The Republicans forced a vote to certify Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump maintained that he had won the election, despite the Capitol attack. Some members of Congress were concerned that the process could be easily manipulated.

The new rules require that one-fifth (or more) of each chamber vote to allow for a vote on the electors’ lists of states.

These new provisions ensure that only one slate of electors reaches Congress. Trump and his allies failed to form alternative slates of electors from states Biden won. Every governor will now have to sign off on electors. Congress can’t consider slates submitted from different officials. If any of these electors are challenged, the bill establishes a legal process.

This legislation would also close an existing loophole, which was not used in 2020, but experts fear could be. It allows state legislatures to name electors in violation of the popular vote of their state in the event that a “failed election”. This term is understood to refer to a contest that has been disrupted or so uncertain that it’s impossible to determine who the winner was. However, the law prior to this one does not clearly define the meaning.

A state can now change the date for its presidential election, but only in the case of “extraordinary and tragic events” such as a natural catastrophe.

Hasen stated that although the changes have been significant, there are still dangers to democracy. She noted that Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Governor in Arizona, was still waiting for a ruling in a lawsuit she filed Friday to overturn Katie Hobbs’ victory.

Hasen stated, “Nobody should believe that passing this legislation will make us out of the woods.” “This is not a one-and-done”