This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 10th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Time is of the essence to adjust the Electoral Count Act so that the confusion it helped spur after the last presidential

contest doesn't happen again.

Cato's Tommy Berry explains why bipartisan reform is possible and why now is better than later.

So I've talked to Walter Olson, your colleague, about the Electoral Count Act and how it ought

to be fixed.

In general, what are the elements of the Electoral Count Act?

Sure, so in broad strokes, the Electoral Count Act is the law that regulates

how Congress conducts the counting of the electoral

votes for president every four years. This is something the Constitution

requires. It mandates that the electors don't meet in Washington, D.C.

They each meet in their respective states, the 538 electors who compose the electoral

college, and they mail their votes old school style to

Washington DC and the Constitution mandates that the Vice President the

President of the Senate opens it in the presence of the House and Senate, and then the votes are counted.

That's all the Constitution tells us.

The Electoral Count Act takes us the rest of the way.

It explains that they're opened in alphabetical order. It explains that they're opened in alphabetical order.

It explains that Congress has the opportunity to challenge a vote if they don't think it's valid or if they don't think it was cast as the Constitution requires.

And it says that if and only if a majority of both houses

vote to reject a purported ballot,

...