# Electoral Count Reform Act The **Electoral Count Reform Act** (enacted December 2022 as part of the FY2023 omnibus) rewrote the Electoral Count Act of 1887 in direct response to the January 6, 2021 attempt to overturn the presidential result. Its core provisions: - **The Vice President's role is ministerial** — explicitly stated, foreclosing the theory that the presiding officer may reject or choose between elector slates. - **Objection thresholds raised** from one member of each chamber to **one-fifth of each chamber**. - **A single lawful slate per state**, identified by the governor unless state law says otherwise, with an expedited judicial process for disputes. - **Hardened the "safe harbor" and the certification calendar.** > [!important] It covers the presidency only > The ECRA does **nothing** for congressional elections. Midterms are certified under fifty state regimes with no federal statutory floor, and the only federal backstop is each chamber judging its own members under Art. I, § 5. That gap is mapped at [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]]. ## How it passed [[Susan Collins]] and [[Joe Manchin]] convened a bipartisan group in early 2022 and introduced the bill that July; it cleared the Senate Rules Committee under Amy Klobuchar in September and then, unable to get floor time on its own, rode the FY2023 omnibus as Division P — Senate 68–29 on **December 22, 2022**, House 225–201 on December 23, signed December 29. The House tally is the political fact: a large majority of House Republicans voted against clarifying that the Vice President cannot overturn an election, eighteen months after the [[January 6 Capitol Attack]]. Its full name is the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, and the transition half — letting more than one candidate draw federal transition resources when neither concedes within five days — was written for exactly the November 2020 situation the [[Fake Electors Scheme]] tried to prolong. ## What was left out The negotiators dropped the proposals that would have federalized more of the process: a statutory definition of the "failed election" contingency (they removed the old escape clause instead of redefining it), penalties for officials who refuse to certify, and any protection for the *state and local* officials whose refusal to certify was the pressure point in 2020 and again in 2024. The Act assumes the governor of each state will send an honest certificate and provides an expedited three-judge panel if a candidate sues; it does not say what happens when the governor is the problem. The [[Electoral College Process Flow]] shows where those seams are; [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] shows that for every office but one, nothing federal applies at all. ## See Also - [[Electoral College Process Flow]] — the full presidential flow this Act rewrote, step by step - [[Electoral Count Act]] — the 1887 statute it replaced - [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] - [[Electoral College]] - [[Federal Contested Elections Act]]