Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will support the bipartisan electoral reform bill that emerged from the Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday afternoon.
The bill, intended to make it harder to object to presidential election results following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, received the Republican leader’s endorsement during a Tuesday floor speech. A similar piece of legislation passed the House last week.
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“I strongly support the modest changes that our colleagues in the working group have fleshed out after months of detailed discussions,” McConnell said. “I will proudly support the legislation, provided that nothing more than technical changes are made to its current form.”
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The electoral reform bill ultimately cleared the Senate Rules Committee 14-1, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) being the lone “no” vote. The legislation has 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans backing it and is likely to pass the full Senate once brought up for a vote.
In endorsing the bill, McConnell is breaking with his House counterparts. House GOP leadership whipped a “no” vote when the legislation came up in the lower chamber, but the House version goes further than the Senate’s. Only nine Republicans voted with Democrats to pass it.
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Following Senate approval, the bill would have to be reconciled with the House version.
Among the differences, the House bill requires one-third of each chamber to raise objections to states’ electoral results, while in the Senate, this threshold is one-fifth. Currently, only one person in each chamber needs to object.
The bills also differ over the grounds on which these objections can be made, with the House version providing a narrower scope of reasons to object.
The timeline for a vote on the Senate bill is uncertain and will almost certainly be delayed until after Congress passes a continuing budget resolution by Friday to avoid a shutdown.
