Manchin, D-W.Va., held a virtual briefing with reporters Wednesday afternoon from his office on Capitol Hill.

The ECRA would reform and modernize the outdated 1887 ECA to ensure that electoral votes tallied by Congress reflect each state’s public vote for president.

“It’s probably one of the most important things we can do to make sure that the ugly head of an insurrection such as we saw on January 6th never happens again, or people were never lead to believe that a vice president has the power to alter the whole electoral process,” said Manchin.

He said the act makes the vice president strictly a ceremonial role, and makes it difficult to challenge the certification of an election. Manchin said it takes 86 congress members to contest any election returns in any state, as well as 20 senators to support that position.

photo by: AP Photo

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., voiced his support of the Electoral Count Reform Act on Wednesday.

Manchin discussed the Inflation Reduction Act, and said it has been misrepresented by the press. It was signed into law in August.

“We have to have energy security in this nation, you cannot be the superpower of the world unless you’re energy independent,” he said.

Manchin said he and his staff presented the bill to President Joe Biden’s administration. He said it’s a 10-year commitment to support a cleaner fossil industry in the United States. He said it will help the U.S. become energy independent and develop the technology of the future.

“Everybody thinks this is just an environmental bill,” he said. “We cannot put a wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico unless we’re drilling for gas and oil.”

On Dec. 15, the Senate rejected a bid to add Manchin’s energy permitting reform as an amendment to a defense bill. Manchin said he’s going to keep working on getting it approved. He said Biden’s administration knows that without permitting reforms there isn’t a pathway to completing projects.

“If it’s not done, then the billions of dollars we are trying to invest will be stranded, because they’ll never get the permit in time to use the money,” he said.

Manchin said it was the perfect time for this reform, due to the interest from the Democrats in new technology. He said they’ve never really had Democrats support it before.

“So we’ve got a good balanced piece of legislation, we’re going to continue to try to do that — we’ll just keep working on it, it’s all we can do,” he said.