Reforming the Electoral Count Act would help prevent another riot

FOR MUCH of the past year, Democrats in Congress have fitfully and unsuccessfully pushed various bits of voting-rights legislation. Whatever the merits of these bills, they are an odd first response to the insurrection of January 6th 2021. Record numbers of Americans voted in 2020. Long queues and pandemic-driven confusion notwithstanding, the problem was not access to the ballot, it was the attempted chicanery with the counting. The Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA), which tries to set guidelines for how Congress settles disputed results in presidential elections, is vague, confusing, possibly unconstitutional—and ripe for reform.