process of formally certifying the results of the 2020 election. now lawmakers on capitol hill are looking at ways to prevent something like this from succeeding in the future, which is why there have been talks about potentially reforming the electoral count act, which is a nearly 140-year-old rule of law that governs what happened on january 6th, that the sflixs tried to stop. politico report that a partnership group of senators, quote, are considering updating the 1887 law to clarify that the vice president s role in overseeing congress certification of election results is ministerial. in order, they cannot overturn the results like the trump people were right to get pence to do. in addition, the group is looking at potentially changing the tleshl for challenging election results. lakes spshlist matthew seligmann
ukraine to help him politically damage his then-point joe biden in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. trump you might remember was accused of making much-needed military aide to ukraine, aide that had been approved by congress contingent upon ukraine using investigations into biden and his son hunter. well, my next guest has admitted to being part of that pressure campaign. lev parnas worked with rudy giuliani. he famously sat down for a tell-all interview with my colleague rachel maddow in 2020, not long after he was arrested on campaign finance charges. parnas was convicted in october, but was allowed by a judge to remain free on bail, as he awaits sentencing and trial on separate federal charges. we should note, neither of those cases directly related to trump s influence campaign in ukraine.
in 2024. so you ve answered a question i was going to ask you next. that is, this is an important matter and it is a vulnerability that is actually relatively easy to fix, because there s actually bipartisan support to do it. but it fixes one part of the problem. there are now two parts of the problem. there s the stuff that happened on january 6th in congress and all the stuff that has since happened, some of it prior to the election, but has since happened in the states and the voter suppression. just to be clear, the electoral college act would solve one problem, does dmot anything for the other problem. not quite. the electoral count act is like a relay race. it s a law that governs how the electoral votes get from states dong. there s the first runner in the relay race, states, and particularly governors, and they pass off the baton to congress, the electoral votes to congress. there are these two parts of the process that are governed by the
that s going tyke multiple different measures. what we ve seen on capitol hill so far is that congress has been focused on fixing the problem that we saw on january 6th of last year. there was a concern that congress would reject legitimate electoral votes from arizona and pennsylvania. but as you know, since then, we ve learned that there was this parallel effort to have alternative electors september to congress. the reason why those alternative fake electors were fake, that hinged on the fact that the governor didn t certify them. that s the only difference. and the law in place places enormous legal weight on which slate of electors the governor certifies. so to fix this problem, we have to fix the electoral count act in what congress powers are, but also have to look at the risk of state manipulation, that governors or other state actors can manipulate the results as well. and if we don t pay attention to both of those challenges and vulnerabilities, then we re at risk of this nig
it is actually that easy. pre-2020, this seemed like far far-fetched plot. while the scheme fell apart last time, there s currently actually nothing in place legally to prevent it from succeeding the next time. only good people. and some good judges stopped it from happening. joining me now is matthew seligmann, a lawyer and legal scholar and fellow at the yale law school center for private law. matthew, good morning to you. thank you for being with us. the scenario you lay out, is it solved by many things or it can it be solved at least in part by the revision or the repair of the electoral count act? thank you for having me. this is a law this is multiple vulnerabilities and multiple flaws. congress has to act to repair those vulnerabilities, but