Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Poll finds bipartisan support for reforming Electoral Count Act

Congress

A majority of voters across the political spectrum support reforming the Electoral Count Act, which governs Congress' role in the process. Above: Members of the House meet to certify the 2020 election.

J. Scott Applewhite/Getty Images

A majority of voters across the political spectrum agree that the Electoral Count Act should be modernized to "protect the will of the people," recent polling found.

The Electoral Count Act of 1887 governs the casting and counting of electoral votes for president and vice president every four years, including Congress' role in the process. But election security and voting rights experts say the law's language is arcane and often confusing, which leaves room for misuse. Modernizing the law, experts say, would safeguard American democracy against another Jan. 6 insurrection or other potential crisis.

Proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act would establish more clearly defined rules for Congress and the vice president to follow, making it more difficult to reject a state's certified election results. Overall, 62 percent of voters surveyed supported such a change to the law, according to a poll released Tuesday by good-government groups Issue One, the Campaign Legal Center, Protect Democracy and RepresentUs.


Three-quarters of Democrats said they somewhat or strongly favored reforming the Electoral Count Act. More than half of independents (56 percent) and Republicans (52 percent) also indicated support.

Nearly two-thirds of voters said they would be more likely to support updating the law if the proposed changes were written by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. Nearly seven in 10 Democrats would be more likely to support ECA reform if it was bipartisan, followed by 63 percent of Republicans and half of independents.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

"One of the reasons people say that America is 'exceptional' is that we regularly hold national elections run by the states per the Constitution, accept the outcome and peacefully transfer power based on the results," said Zach Wamp, a Republican who represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representative for eight terms and now co-chairs Issue One's ReFormers Caucus. "[The Electoral Count Act] must be modernized for the 21st century so that what happened January 6, 2021, doesn't happen again."

The voters primarily support ECA reform because they are worried a political party will try to overturn the results of an upcoming presidential election in order to put its own candidate in power. A majority of Democrats (56 percent), independents (53 percent) and Republicans (63 percent) raised concerns about this.

Most voters (58 percent) said there should be only a narrow set of circumstances in which Congress could reject a state's certified election results, compared to a quarter who said Congress should have broad power to reject results. While previous election certifications featured token opposition by members of Congress, the 2020 results were heavily contested by Republicans on Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters stormed the Capitol.

"As our poll shows, voters on both sides of the aisle are worried about partisan politicians trying to throw out a state's certified presidential election results," said Robert Jones from GS Strategy Group, which conducted the poll. "The public wants to see Congress act, and they strongly believe that a solution must be bipartisan. With the next presidential election having the potential to be one of the most contentious ever, this is one area where both Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree."

The nationwide online survey conducted by GS Strategy Group and ALG Research interviewed 1,012 registered voters between Sept. 20-26. The margin of error was 3.2 percentage points.

Read More

A Community Response to Disabled Gun Violence Survivors

A Community Response to Disabled Gun Violence Survivors

“What did you see once you got shot?” That might not be one of the first things victims of gun violence are asked, but it was the first question Access Living asked in a survey used to address and assess the many difficulties survivors of gun violence faced.

The nation’s gun violence crisis continues to be a significant threat to people’s lives, as it has claimed over 10,000 lives in the United States every year for the past 10 years, according to Gun Violence Archive. Only three months into 2025, there have been over 100 shootings reported in Chicago, and this will probably continue to rise, as in the country in 2023, on average, 118 people died of gun violence a day. According to the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, for every person who dies due to gun violence, more than two survive, usually with significant lifelong physical injuries that they have to learn to live with, along with the mental trauma of the incident.

Keep ReadingShow less
Improving Infrastructure In Washington To Benefit Both People and Nature

The 50: Washington

Improving Infrastructure In Washington To Benefit Both People and Nature

The 50is a four-year multimedia project in which the Fulcrum visits different communities across all 50 states to learn what motivated them to vote in the 2024 presidential election and see how the Donald Trump administration is meeting those concerns and hopes.

Washington State has historically fluctuated between Republican and Democratic preferences. While it was considered a Republican-leaning swing state until the 1980s, the political landscape shifted significantly in the following decades. Since 1988, the Democratic Party has won every presidential election in Washington, consistently achieving victory by double-digit margins since 2008.

Keep ReadingShow less
House passes 1,100-page spending and tax bill, raising debt by up to $4 trillion

US Capitol

Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

House passes 1,100-page spending and tax bill, raising debt by up to $4 trillion

Early Thursday morning the House passed H.R. 1: One Big Beautiful Bill Act — yes, that’s it’s official title — a 1,100+ page bill with large cuts to both spending and taxes. We know the big picture but little about the details because it hasn’t been available for long enough for anyone to actually read it.

This is the “reconciliation” bill, the first signature legislation moved by Republicans in Congress and President Trump. This bill has special rules that make it immune to the Senate filibuster, so it can pass the Senate if a simple majority vote for it.

Keep ReadingShow less
How Language and Cultural Barriers in Healthcare Plague Seattle’s Latino Community

stethoscope on top of a clipboard

Getty Images

How Language and Cultural Barriers in Healthcare Plague Seattle’s Latino Community

A visit to the hospital can already be a stressful event for many. For those in the Seattle Latino community, language and cultural barriers present in the healthcare system can make the process even more daunting.

According to Leo Morales, a healthcare provider at UW Medicine’s LatinX Diabetes Clinic and co-director of the Latino Center for Health, communication difficulties are one of the most obvious barriers in healthcare for Latinos with limited English proficiency.

Keep ReadingShow less