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Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Tuesday, October 15th, 2024. This is the

excerpt. Today we discuss congressional efforts that make it hard to overturn an election

while loopholes still remain.

Plus polling shows Trump leads Harris in swing states when it comes to foreign wars and how threats

against FEMA workers are hindering post-hurricane recovery efforts.

Congress in 2022 made overturning elections harder, but there are still loopholes in the law.

I spoke with USA Today Justice Department correspondent Aisha Bogchi to find out more.

Aisha, thanks for making the time as always.

Thank you, Taylor.

I'm happy to be here.

So, Aisha, let's just start with this for folks who maybe weren't even aware that Congress

tackled this issue.

What is the 2022 Electoral count reform act and what really sparked its passing.

A bipartisan group of people in Congress got together to try to shore up what they saw as possible vulnerabilities in the presidential election

process that were really exposed by the experience in 2020, especially the attack on the

capital on January 6th when Congress was in the process of counting presidential electoral votes but also earlier in the process where you saw some Trump allies try to put together basically slates of alternative presidential

electors to come and potentially have their votes replace the votes that were approved for

Joe Biden. The new law did a few things to kind of shore up the process.

One thing it made clear is that the vice president's role is what's called ministerial.

Basically that means it's ceremonial. It's clarifying that someone in Mike Pence's position that will be Kamala Harris this time around doesn't have the power to change the votes.

...