During an interview published on the first anniversary of the Capitol riot, PBS anchor Judy Woodruff told Harris that Democrats didn't have enough support to pass voting rights legislation and asked why a Republican counteroffer to modify the Electoral Count Act, virtually changing the way the Electoral College vote count takes place, would not a be an adequate compromise.
"It's not a solution to the problem at hand," she said on PBS NewsHour. "We need federal laws that guarantee the freedom and right of every American to have access to the ballot, to be able to vote."
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The ECA, enacted in 1887, lays out counting and certifying votes after a presidential election. It has brought renewed criticism in the past year after former President Donald Trump and his allies looked to identify the limits of the Electoral College process with a plan to enlist members of Congress and urge then-Vice President Mike Pence to hinder the Jan. 6 certification and send electoral votes back to a few battleground states where GOP-led legislatures could try to overturn the results over concerns about fraud and irregularities.
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Harris and top Democrats in the Senate have pushed for voting reform bills, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, that would adjust the rules for how states carry their elections in a way that proponents say would fight voter disenfranchisement.
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However, the party doesn't appear to have enough votes in a 50-50 split Senate.
In the meantime, Republicans in Congress have mentioned an openness to reforming the ECA. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said "obviously has some flaws. And it is worth, I think, discussing," according to Politico. "With the Electoral Count Act, as we saw last time around, there are some things there that, I think, could be corrected,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune told Axios.
But the concept of a counteroffer might be a bad option, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer appeared to refuse the idea of reforming the ECA during a speech Thursday.
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"As we know too well, state legislatures are working day and night to undermine our democratic process from the get-go," he said. "What good is it to accurately count a result that's compromised from the start?"
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Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, wrote in a memoir that he and Trump strategist Steve Bannon had a plan to halt Congress’s certification of election results last Jan. 6 — a plan that was hurt, he said, not helped, by the riot that engulfed the U.S. Capitol.
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