NC Republicans who voted to overturn 2020 election oppose plan to avoid another coup

Almost everything in Congress — access to contraception, lowering the cost of insulin, infrastructure — seems to be about politics. One might hope, though, that partisanship could be put aside for something as important as democracy.

Apparently not. Because when the House passed critical legislation on Wednesday intended to prevent a repeat of the 2020 coup attempt, the vote fell almost entirely along party lines. Every Republican in North Carolina’s delegation — and there are nine of them — voted no.

The bill closes glaring loopholes in the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act — loopholes that Donald Trump and his allies exploited in their plot to overturn the last presidential election. It raises the threshold required for members of Congress to object to a state’s electoral votes, and clarifies that the vice president cannot refuse to certify the results, as Trump tried to pressure Mike Pence to do on Jan. 6.

It shouldn’t be controversial. A bipartisan group of senators, including North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, has introduced a strong and broadly similar measure. Yet House Republican leaders officially rallied against the bill, decrying it as “nothing more than an unconstitutional partisan power grab.” (Maybe they just forgot about the unconstitutional partisan power grab that almost happened last year.)

There are few, if any, legitimate reasons to oppose Electoral Count Act reform, which is probably why Republicans didn’t offer very many of them. Instead, Republicans did what they do best: they diverted the conversation to “real” issues that affect “real” Americans, like inflation, the border crisis and Joe Biden. One lawmaker suggested on the House floor that no one really cares about Electoral Count Act reform besides “woke yuppies” who comprise the Democratic base.

Republicans also cited the fact that the legislation was introduced by two members of the House’s Jan. 6 committee, including GOP pariah Liz Cheney — which apparently makes it biased and unserious by default.

“If it comes out of a rotten process, you probably ought to begin with a healthy level of skepticism,” Rep. Dan Bishop, a North Carolina Republican, told Axios this week.

But there’s a very big difference between a “healthy level of skepticism” and writing something off completely. When all was said and done, there were only nine Republicans who voted in favor of the bill, and all of them either lost their primaries or intend to retire next year anyway. The other 203 apparently decided it was OK to leave the door open for future elections to be stolen — another reminder of the vise-like grip Trump still has on his party.

Of course, all but one House Republican from North Carolina voted to overturn the 2020 election results, and none of them voted for Trump’s impeachment, so maybe Wednesday’s vote shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Still, it’s shameful that they would oppose reform after everything we’ve learned about Jan. 6, and it’s a disservice to voters.

Call us idealists, but what’s most troubling is that there truly doesn’t seem to be anything that will prompt elected officials to put politics aside. We came alarmingly close to an actual constitutional crisis, yet Republicans don’t seem particularly intent on preventing a future one. It’s no longer just the fringe members of the Republican Party that we have to worry about with elections — it’s every Republican who lets personal vendettas and partisanship impact policy when the stakes are this high.

If Republicans have issues with the bill, they should specify what they are. They should also offer solutions, instead of slamming it as a “messaging bill” or suggesting it’s a waste of time. That’s what lawmakers do with worthy legislation — they work with each other and between chambers to shape it into something everyone can accept.

Of course, at least some and perhaps many Republicans don’t really want to protect elections. In the end, the GOP’s biggest objection to Electoral Count Act reform seems to be that it reminds people the former president tried a coup. Supporting the bill would require them to finally admit, at least implicitly, that what happened on and before Jan. 6 was wrong. They’ve already shown us they refuse to do that.