Dem
51
GOP
49
The omnibus bill recently passed by Congress updates the Electoral Count Act of 1887. Most importantly, it specifies the role of the president of the Senate as: Watch the electoral votes be counted and keep quiet during the process. Specifically, even if he or she sees something fishy, an objection can only be raised if one-fifth of the members of each chamber object. Thus, a situation like the one that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, with the president urging the president of the Senate to object to the count. is less likely to occur. Of course, the president can urge anybody to do anything, but the chance of success is lower now that the law specifically states that an objection to any state's electoral votes requires one-fifth of each chamber.
However, ambiguity in the Electoral Count Act was only one way Donald Trump tried to stop the transition. The other flew under the radar, but was also important. It had to do with the transition. Setting up a new administration takes a lot of time and money. The president-elect needs to rent office space, hire a large personnel department to receive and vet tens of thousands of applications for the more than 1,000 Executive Branch positions requiring Senate confirmation, and more. Waiting until Jan. 20 to even start the process will cripple the new government for its first few months. Why would anyone want to do that?
Well, if the outgoing president wasn't planning to leave even though he lost the election, we might have such a situation. Actually, we had precisely that situation after the 2020 election. The then-administrator of the General Services Administration, Emily Murphy, refused to release any funds to Joe Biden to use for the transition because her boss said Biden lost the election. This really hampered Biden and made it impossible to hit the ground running.
The omnibus bill deals with this problem. It says that if the winner is not certain 5 days after the election, both major-party candidates get transition resources on an ongoing basis. That way a recalcitrant GSA administrator can't hold up the actual winner. As soon as the winner is known, the flow of money to the loser stops.
The 2020 election was the first one when the outgoing president's administration refused to release funds to the incoming president for the transition. In 2000, there was ambiguity about who won until the Supreme Court decided to pick a president. But once that happened, funds were released. (V)