What is the Electoral Count Act and why does it present problems?

With voting rights legislation all but dead in the Senate, and the former president now openly suggesting he tried to use a vaguely-worded 19th-century law to try to manipulate the last presidential election, a growing group of bipartisan lawmakers is backing the idea of changing how Congress tallies presidential election results by reforming the 1887 Electoral Count Act.

The law was intended to set up a peaceful transfer of power after an election dispute, but it's one former President Donald Trump and his allies sought to exploit in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump made his clearest statement yet this week that he believed Pence could and should have simply overturned the results himself, responding to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who was asked about efforts to reform the law on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos."