Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022

The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 is a revision of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, adding to procedures set out in the Constitution of the United States for the counting of electoral votes following a presidential election. It also amended the Presidential Transition Act.

It was passed and enacted by the 117th Congress and President Joe Biden in December 2022 as Division P of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.

Background
The act is intended to prevent a repeat of the chaos that followed Donald Trump's refusal to concede after the 2020 United States presidential election. This led to a delay in the transition to the Biden administration, as well as a movement to have Vice President Mike Pence block the formal certification of the election results. The act addressed issues such as these by allowing some transition to begin even when an election result is unclear, and clarified the vice president's role in the certification of electoral votes.

Legislative history
The bill was sponsored by Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia in July, 2022. After five months of negotiations, it became Division P of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, which passed 68–29 in the Senate on December 22, 2022, and 225–201 in the House the following day. On December 29, 2022, it was signed into law by President Joe Biden.

Provisions
The law includes multiple revisions to the voting, certification, counting, and transition process.

State procedures
The law identifies the governor (or, in the case of Washington, D.C., the district's mayor) as responsible for submitting certificates of ascertainment, unless otherwise specified by state laws or constitutions. In addition, a certificate that was revised as ordered by a state or federal court judgment before the meeting of electors supersedes all previous certificates.

Under the law, states that select electors by popular vote can modify the period of voting only in the case of "extraordinary and catastrophic" events. The modification may occur only according to laws that were passed before the voting period.

The date on which the electors convene to vote also changes under the law, to the "first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December". It was previously one day earlier.

Review of claims brought by candidates
An action brought by an aggrieved candidate for president or vice president is guaranteed an expedited review.

According to the law, the venue for such an action shall be the United States district court of the federal judicial district where the state capital is located. The action shall be heard by a three-judge judicial panel consisting of two circuit court of appeals judges and one district court judge. The court shall expedite the disposition of the action, in accordance with deadlines established by the law. Any appeal from the court's judgment may be heard directly by the Supreme Court on an expedited basis, and the court's final order on remand must occur at the latest on the day before the electors' meeting.

Congressional proceedings
The law clarifies that the vice president's role in the counting of the electoral votes is "solely ministerial," with no power to "determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate or resolve disputes over the proper list of electors, the validity of electors, or the votes of electors."

Any objection made by senators or representatives during the counting of the electoral votes must be made in writing and signed by at least one-fifth of the senators and one-fifth of the members of the House of Representatives. Previously, an objection required the signatures of only one member of each chamber.

The law also limits the grounds for an objection to one of the following:
 * 1) The electors of a state were not lawfully certified
 * 2) An elector's vote was not "regularly given"

Transition funds
The law allows multiple "apparent successful candidates" to receive federal presidential transition funds if more than one candidate has not conceded five days after the election. It provides guidelines for administrator of the General Services Administration to determine when and to whom funds should be released.