House Democrats today unveiled a comprehensive elections and ethics reform package and other pieces of legislation targeting many of their long-held complaints about Donald Trump and how he won the 2016 presidential election.
The bill, among the first to be considered as Democrats take control of the House after eight years, would force presidential and vice presidential candidates – and anyone currently holding those offices – to release their previous 10 income tax returns.
Trump, who once insisted that GOP nominee Mitt Romney release his tax returns in 2012, and vowed to do the same if he were a presidential candidate, has since been resistant claiming they remain under audit.
Separately, a Democratic congressman filed a bill that would amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College and provide for presidents to be chosen by popular vote.
Trump, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have both previously supported abolishing the electoral college.
“Americans expect and deserve the winner of the popular vote to win office,” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), the bill’s sponsor.
The presidency is decided by an Electoral College system that apportions 538 final votes among the 50 states and requires a majority of 270 to win.
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by a 304-227 Electoral College margin, but she won nearly 3 million more popular votes.
All other major political offices in America are determined by a popular vote.
In 2012, Trump called the electoral college a “disaster for democracy.”
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012
In 2014, Gingrich offered a glowing endorsement of a movement to end the electoral college, saying it “does not reflect America’s tremendous diversity.”
Cohen’s legislation would also make it illegal for presidents to issue pardons to themselves, family members, aides or campaign staffers.
The Democrats’ larger bill would forbid states from purging voter rolls on a large scale to eliminate residents who died, moved out of state or were convicted of disqualifying felonies.
And it would restore felons’ voting rights, regardless of the nature of their crimes, after they serve their sentences.
The bill also would ban executive-branch officials from lobbying their old agency for two years after they leave government and reauthorize and enhance the Office of Government Ethics, which has clashed with Trump.
Rep. John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat who is leading the reform effort, said Democrats were “responding directly to the American people and what they want to see in our democracy,” as shown by the election results.
While some elements of the bill have bipartisan support, the overall package faces opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate and from Trump.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has pronounced the reform measure dead on arrival in the Senate, a claim Sarbanes embraced as a badge of honor.