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With voting rights reform now firmly in the rear view mirror, negotiations to reform the Electoral Count Act have ramped up, but it remains far from certain that the talks will bear fruit despite the growing bipartisan interest.

The obscure 19th century law that governs the counting of each state's electoral votes for president, a process then-President Donald Trump and his allies sought to exploit to secure a victory not won at the ballot box, has long been the subject of bipartisan ire.

The law allows one congressman paired with one senator to object to the results submitted by each state, something both parties have done previously, although Trump allies in 2020 attempted to block the decision of far more states than ever before.

The vice president's role in what usually is a perfunctory proceeding -- counting and announcing the votes -- is also extremely unclear, and Trump and his team attempted, in an effort to overturn the election, to exert pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to declare some states' slates of electoral votes in question, pressure that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Vice President Mike Pence presides over a joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 Electoral College results, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

"I've always thought we should just repeal it," Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a former secretary of state, said Thursday. "If you can't replace it, I'd be just for repealing it. I think it creates more problems than it creates solutions. And so I think there's a lot of interest in doing something about that. And my guess is that the majority of Republican senators would agree with that."

But therein lies the problem for Democrats, unsure if GOP interest in electoral law changes is real after the party's unified, high-profile opposition to federal voting law changes. Republicans are, likewise, suspicious of Democrats whose leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, recently lambasted attempts to reform the ECA as "offensive."

"If you're going to rig the game and say, 'Oh, we'll count the rigged game accurately,' what good is that?" Schumer recently scoffed when asked about budding ECA reform efforts. Branding those efforts "the McConnell plan," since the GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky -- has expressed an openness to reforming the law, Schumer added, "It's unacceptably insufficient and even offensive."

Despite the lack of trust among the parties, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has led bipartisan talks behind closed doors for the past three weeks to try to reform the law, with interest in those negotiations growing "big time" in the wake of the Democrats' failed effort at broader electoral reforms, according to a Senate aide with knowledge of the matter.

"We're going to be working hard over the recess," Collins told reporters. "I'm very encouraged at the amount of interest that there is from both sides of the aisle."

Sen. Mitt Romney speaks to members of the media while departing the Capitol, Feb. 9, 2021.

For his part, McConnell reiterated his support for possible ECA reform and the Collins talks Thursday, but went a bit further, telling ABC News, "I think it needs fixing, and I wish them well, and I'd be happy to talk a look at whatever they can come up with." Asked for any red lines in those negotiations, the leader said, "I just encourage the discussion, because I think (the ECA) is clearly is flawed. This is directly related to what happened on January 6th, and I think we ought to be able to figure out a bipartisan way to fix it."

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, an early member of the group, told ABC News, "There are about 10 Republicans and maybe four or five Democrats that are working on it. We exchanged a list of things that we thought ought to be included in an election reform package -- some items related to making sure that election officials were not harassed, others related to how elections are certified, others related to what the role of the Vice President is in the electoral accounting process, how you would deal with an objection to a slate of electors."

The details around how to implement each of these items would be complex, and the negotiation is "just now beginning to talk about which of these we'll find sufficient support for in a bill," said Romney.

Both conservative Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona -- who refused to support changing the Senate rules to pass their party's sweeping voting rights legislation -- are working with Collins on ECA changes, along with GOP Senators Thom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski, and Roger Wicker, among others. Some senators, like Blunt, Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., have shown interest, according to aides involved in the talks, but have yet to commit to being a part of the group.

Sens. Joe Manchin and Susan Collins talk with reporters about voting rights at the Capitol, Jan. 20, 2022.

Manchin, speaking with reporters about the talks, said he was particularly focused on violence and threats against poll workers which have ramped up in recent years in particular in the wake of Trump's so-called "big lie" that he won the 2020 election but it was stolen from him by fraud.

"They're scared now, because of the highly charged political atmosphere. We do want to make sure that we can raise this to the level of a federal crime if you accost, if you threaten anyone who works at the polls, you'll be dealt with with the harshest penalties," said Manchin, who is leading the talks for Democrats. "You're not going to fool with the count and our voting people."

The Collins-Manchin group plans to meet by Zoom in the next few days, with an eye toward potentially producing a legislative proposal at the end of next week's recess, according to Romney, though Collins offered a more sober estimate. "I think we don't know how long it's going to take. We've done a lot of research. We've talked to election experts, professors, the election assistance commissioners, all sorts of people to make sure we get this right."

A view of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 19, 2022 in Washington, D.C.

Collins said the scope of her group's work will go beyond just the 150-year old Electoral Count Act, like additional grant funding for states to improve the quality of their voting systems, and that she was encouraged by President Joe Biden's comments expressing a willingness to work with Republicans to get this done.

A parallel effort is happening among a group of senior Democrats, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Angus King - - led by Schumer's number two, Dick Durbin of Illinois. Durbin said he planned to talk to Sen. Collins about her efforts to see what might be done together.

"We wouldn't necessarily merge our efforts, no. We just want to see what they are doing and talk it through," Durbin told reporters this week.

In the House, a staff report from the Administration Committee, outlined in a 31-page report potential changes to the law which the group says is "badly in need of reform." Their proposal could provide a foundation for the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks from which to recommend legislative changes, the panel's chair, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told NPR.

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Bipartisan senators turn to reforming Electoral Count Act now that voting rights standoff over - ABC News

Mr. Giuliani claimed fraud at a series of unofficial state legislative hearings, and even argued one election fraud case himself, in federal court in Philadelphia, where he suffered a decisive defeat.

Voters, not lawyers, choose the president, the court declared at one point.

On Jan. 6, speaking to a crowd of Trump supporters before the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Giuliani called for trial by combat. Later, as the building was under siege, he called lawmakers in an attempt to delay the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory.

Senator Tuberville, or I should say Coach Tuberville, this is Rudy Giuliani, the presidents lawyer, Mr. Giuliani said in a voice mail message intended for Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, but mistakenly left on the phone of Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. Im calling you because I want to discuss with you how theyre trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down.

Ms. Ellis, the committee said, prepared and circulated two memos analyzing the constitutional authority for former Vice President Mike Pence to reject or delay counting electoral votes from states where Mr. Trumps allies had attempted to arrange for the submission of an alternate slate of electors. In the memos, obtained by Politico, Ms. Ellis advised that Mr. Pence had the authority to not count electoral votes from six states in which the Trump campaign falsely alleged there was widespread fraud.

Ms. Powell was among the leading promoters of some of the most far-fetched and fantastical claims of widespread voter fraud, including a bizarre conspiracy theory alleging a vast plot by China, Venezuela and the financier George Soros to hack into Dominion Voting Systems machines to flip votes away from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.

She, too, urged Mr. Trump to seize voting machines, according to the committee.

In December, Mr. Trump considered naming Ms. Powell to be a special counsel overseeing an investigation of voter fraud, even after his campaign had sought to distance itself from her as she aired wild and baseless claims about Dominion voting machines.

Her organization, Defending the Republic, raised $14.9 million between December 2020 and July. Ms. Powells group has more than $9.3 million in funds on hand, according to an independent audit filed with Florida, which investigated the organization and alleged multiple violations of state law.

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Rudy Giuliani and 3 Others Subpoenaed by Jan. 6 Committee - The New York Times

The January 6 insurrectionPhoto: Brent Stirton (Getty Images)

For a guy who has spent the last month or so publicly wondering why a lot of people dont seem to like his latest annoyingly bleak comedy about how much our world sucks and how nobody cares and how nobody in power will do anything about it (a movie thats not explicitly about the ongoing COVID nightmare even though it might as well be), Adam McKay sure seems surprisingly eager to put his name on another bleak movie about how much our world sucks and how nobody cares and how nobody in power will ever do anything about it. This time, though, it at least wont be a comedy.

This is from Deadline, which says McKay is co-producing a film written and directed by Billy Ray from The Comey Rule (yet another thing about bad people in the recent past who have yet to pay for their crimes) about the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Yes, barely a year later and with the guy who may or may not have goaded the terrorists into trying to overthrow our struggling democracy set to run forand probably winthe presidency again soon, its simply the perfect time to make this movie!

Of course, people can make movies about depressing real-life topics, its just were all so tired. Do we have to start doing fan-casting for the goddamn QAnon shaman or whatever? Is some famous actor going to try and win an Oscar by playing a guy who took a shit in Nancy Pelosis desk? Ray says its a ground-level view of the insurrection about protestors who became rioters and cops who became defenders of democracy, so yeah, probably.

He also adds that someone else can tell the story of the chaos at the White House on that day, so we probably wont see Comey Rules Brendan Gleeson reprising his role as Trump and doing whatever he was doing that day (other than leaving all of his texts from Mike Pence unread). Additionally, Ray is working with Q: Into The Storm filmmaker Cullen Hoback (who filmed some of the insurrection) to get some insight into QAnon and what it was like on the ground that day.

The project is called J6 was initially developed as a Showtime limited series like The Comey Rule, but Ray reconceived it into a film after McKay came on board as a producer and envisioned it asas in his wordsthe definitive cinematic document on that gut-wrenching day. (A gut-wrenching day that we all saw happen in real time on television a year ago.) The Deadline story says Ray will be shopping the project around now, so theres no word on when or where it will come out.

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Adam Mckay and The Comey Rules Billy Ray are making a January 6 insurrection movie, unfortunately - The A.V. Club

WASHINGTON Investigators from both the Department of Justice and the House Jan. 6 committee appear to be edging closer to former President Donald Trump and his immediate family for their roles in the events leading up to that days violent assault on the Capitol.

In a federal court filing Tuesday, lawyer Bilal Essayli said prosecutors asked his client, Jan. 6 defendant Brandon Straka, about his connections to Trump personally.

The government was focused on establishing an organized conspiracy between defendant, President Donald J. Trump, and allies of the former president, to disrupt the joint session of Congress on January 6, Essayli wrote.

Straka, who spoke at a Stop the Steal rally in Washington the day before the Capitol attack, is awaiting sentencing for his involvement in the January 2021 insurrection, an attempt to overturn Trumps 2020 election loss. He was originally charged with a felony for egging on rioters to take away a police officers shield and to enter the building itself, but was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge in exchange for his cooperation.

Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday issued subpoenas to three of Trumps lawyers involved in spreading his lies that he had actually won the election and suggesting extraconstitutional and possibly illegal means of remaining in power. Among them is personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

And the committee has also subpoenaed the phone call and text message logs of middle son Eric Trump, who spoke at the pre-insurrection rally near the White House and told the audience that Democrat Joe Biden had not actually won the presidency.

Eric Trump, through a spokeswoman for the family business, said Wednesday that he had nothing to conceal. The witch-hunt continues. This partisan committee is welcome to review my phone records, Eric Trump said in a statement. I have absolutely nothing to hide.

Bill Clark via Getty Images

In fact, the House committee is bipartisan, with two Republican members, although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would not permit two other Republicans who had helped spread Trumps election lies from serving on the panel.

CNN and ABC have both reported that the committee has also subpoenaed the phone records of Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of eldest son Donald Trump Jr. He, Guilfoyle and Eric Trumps wife, Lara Trump, also spoke at the Jan. 6 rally, as did Giuliani.

The former president capped off that event with a 72-minute speech in which he repeated his false claims that the election had been riddled with fraud and that he had actually won, and then urged the tens of thousands in attendance to march on the Capitol to pressure lawmakers and his own vice president to install Trump for a second term. We fight like hell. And if you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore, he told them.

While federal prosecutors have charged some 700 Trump supporters in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, the filing by Strakas lawyer is the first clear indication that investigators are looking for a link to Trump personally, and appears to back up a pledge by Attorney General Merrick Garland to pursue the investigation wherever it may go.

The Justice Department remains committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law, whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy, Garland said on the eve of the insurrections first anniversary. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.

And House Jan. 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, in a statement accompanying the subpoenas of Trumps lawyers, said the panel is seeking to understand the pressure campaign to overturn the election. The four individuals weve subpoenaed today advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn the election results, or were in direct contact with the former president about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes, said Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.

A year ago, Trump became the first president to refuse to turn over power peacefully to his successor. He spent weeks attacking the legitimacy of the November 2020 contest that he lost. Hours after polls closed and it appeared that Biden would be the winner, Trump stated that he had really won in a landslide and that his victory was being stolen from him. Those falsehoods continued with a string of failed lawsuits challenging the results in a handful of states.

After the Electoral College voted on Dec. 14, making Bidens win official, Trump instead turned to a last-ditch scheme to pressure his own vice president into handing Trump the election during the pro forma congressional certification of the election results on Jan. 6.

Trump asked his followers to come to Washington that day and told the thousands who showed up that they should march to the Capitol to intimidate Mike Pence into doing what Trump wanted. When you catch somebody in a fraud, youre allowed to go by very different rules, Trump said.

Having a mob presence at the Capitol was key to two possible scenarios Trump and his allies were pushing: One, pressuring Congress and Pence into declaring Trump the winner notwithstanding the actual election results, or, two, delaying the certification vote long enough for GOP lawmakers in states won by Biden to send their own slate of Trump electors.

The mob of supporters stormed the building and chanted Hang Mike Pence when the vice president did not do Trumps bidding. The riot left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer, and four other officers took their own lives in the following weeks and months.

Though the House impeached Trump for inciting the attack, all but seven Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, chose not to convict him thereby letting Trump continue his political career even as he is the subject of several investigations.

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Both DOJ And Jan. 6 Committee Closing In On Trump And His Family, New Filings Show - HuffPost

Hang Mike Pence! was the chilling chant of the mob at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Can the same constituency be persuaded to vote Mike Pence on 5 November 2024? He, for one, appears to think so.

The former vice-president this week travelled across New Hampshire, host of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary elections, to meet local activists, raise money and deliver a speech attacking potential opponent Joe Biden.

Pence, who has nursed White House ambitions since his teens, has also paid recent visits to the early-voting states Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, implying that a run is more likely than not. But there is one problem.

Donald Trump.

The ex-president, whom Pence served faithfully or obsequiously, in the eyes of critics has not forgiven him for ignoring his plea to overturn the result of the 2020 election. That Pence, presiding over the Senate at it certified Bidens victory, had no such power has become irrelevant at this stage.

Pences continued insistence that he did his constitutional duty on 6 January has done little to assuage the sense of betrayal among livid Trump supporters. In June he was heckled as a traitor during a speech to a gathering of religious conservatives in Orlando, Florida hardly a positive omen.

His biggest challenge is the people that hes going to need to vote for him the Republican primary base are also the people who wanted to hang him on January 6, said Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee. I dont see how you overcome that.

Yet the former Indiana governor appears to be playing a long game, perhaps betting that Trumps influence over the party will wane over the next three years. He may also be calculating that the stand he made for democracy on 6 January a day on which he refused to flee the Capitol, taking cover in an underground car park will resonate with moderate Republicans and independents.

Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist in Indiana, said: Hes doing everything he needs to set himself up to run and, if Trump is not the nominee or is not running, I think hes clearly the frontrunner.

I think people are realising that he was an unlikely hero on January 6. In the end, even for people who disagree with him for many other policy positions hes taken, whether it was as a governor or as a vice-president, he did the right thing when the pressure was on on January 6.

Pences visit to New Hampshire was his second to the state, which has a huge say in choosing the party nominee, since leaving office. He attended holiday parties, raised money for state Republicans and posed for photos at at the Simply Delicious bakery in Bedford.

In a speech hosted by Heritage Action, a conservative policy advocacy organisation, the 62-year-old accused Biden of fuelling inflation and lambasted the presidents social and environmental spending plan, warning: Keep your hands off the American peoples pay cheques.

As is customary at this stage of an election cycle, Pence did not confirm or deny whether he was running for president, insisting that his priority was next years midterm elections for Congress.

He told the Associated Press: To be honest with you, all of my focus is on 2022 because I think weve got a historic opportunity for not just a winning election, but a realignment election. So Im dedicating all of my energy to the process of really winning back the Congress and winning statehouses in 2022. And then in 2023, well look around and well go where were called.

The campaign-style tour did not go unnoticed by Trump, who released a statement that said: Good man, but big mistake on not recognizing the massive voter fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. There is no evidence of any such fraud or irregularities.

Pence, however, may choose to borrow from the playbook of Glenn Youngkin, who recently won election as governor of Virginia by keeping Trump at arms length without overtly denouncing him, thereby reaping the best of both worlds: the party establishment and Make America Great Again (Maga) base.

There are already signs of Pence having his cake and eating it too. In a radio interview on Wednesday he repeated a now familiar line that he and Trump may never see eye to eye on the events of 6 January, but he also told several news outlets there were irregularities that happened at the state level in the election. He also insisted that he parted with his boss on good terms.

This Trump-lite approach might do just enough to satisfy the former presidents followers while promising other Republicans a lower political temperature.

Michael DAntonio, a Pence biographer, said: Whats weird is he earned his bona fides with Trump by being so craven in his loyalty and then he expressed his independence in that one moment when it really mattered. So he could make a play in both directions and say, Look, Im Donald Trump but without the violence.

There are signs of the Maga core cooling off or losing interest in politics, DAntonio added. I also knew a number of Trump voters who chose him in 2016 because of Pence. So Pence may have built up a lot of credibility with people. And I guess the last point is, you dont need to win 50% to get the nomination.

Some Republicans, including former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, have said they will not contest the primaries if Trump throws his hat in the ring. Others, such as ex-New Jersey governor Chris Christie, have rejected the idea that a Trump candidacy should prevent others running.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis, South Carolina senator Tim Scott and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo are seen as potential contenders to be party standard bearer. Pence, however, might hope that his status as a former vice-president would count in his favor, just as it did for Biden last year.

Clues to his intentions include the fact he is writing a book and recording a regular podcast: in the latest episode of American Freedom, the devout Christian says we hope and pray the supreme court will overturn Roe v Wade, its 1973 decision upholding a womans constitutional right to abortion.

Should he secure the nomination, however, Pence would be hard pushed to win over millions of Trump critics who have not forgotten how he failed to speak out or take a principled stand during four years of chaos. There are countless hours of footage of him giving speeches in which he mentions President Trump over and over again, praising his leadership and calling him my friend.

Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide, said: Mike Pence will be regarded for what he is, which is a coward void of any real moral conviction or principles.

The fact that he is turning around now, still trying to court the hearts and minds and votes of the very people who perpetrated the domestic terrorist attack on our country illustrates that he is the worst kind of political figure because, even though he may not believe these things, hes still pandering and catering to those elements. I dont believe that history will look back on him kindly at all.

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Pence appears to set up a presidential run can he win ...