This Monday’s joint session of Congress to count electoral votes is expected It will be much less hectic than the certification four years ago, which was interrupted by a violent mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump who They tried to stop the recount and annul the result of an election who had lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
This time, Trump returns to the presidency after winning the 2024 elections that began with Biden as his party’s candidate and ended with the vice president. Kamala Harris at the top of the ballot.
She will preside over the certification of her own defeatfulfilling the constitutional role in the same way that Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, did after the violence subsided on January 6, 2021.
The joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 every four years, normally a routine procedure, is the final step in reaffirming a presidential election after the Electoral College officially chooses the winner in December. The meeting is mandatory under the Constitution and includes several steps.
A look at the joint session:
What happens when Congress meets?
Under federal law, Congress must meet on January 6 to open sealed certificates of each state containing a record of their electoral votes. The votes are brought to the chamber in special mahogany boxes used for that occasion.
Representatives of both parties and both chambers read the results aloud and conduct the official count. The vice president, as president of the Senate, presides over the session and declares the winner.
The Constitution requires that Congress meets and counts the electoral votes. If there is a tie, the House decides who will occupy the presidency. Each congressional delegation has one vote. That has not happened since the 19th century and it will not happen this time because Trump’s electoral victory over Harris was decisive, 312 to 226.
How has it changed since last time?
Congress tightened standards for certification following the 2021 violence and Trump’s attempts to usurp the process.
Notably, the revised Electoral Recount Act, which was signed into law in 2022, more explicitly defines the role of the vice president after Trump will aggressively pressure Pence to try to oppose his defeat, an action that would have gone far beyond Pence’s ceremonial role. Pence snubbed Trump and ultimately certified his own defeat. Harris will do the same.
The updated law clarifies that the vice president has no power to determine the results on January 6.
Harris and Pence are not the first vice presidents to find themselves in the uncomfortable position of certifying their own defeats. In 2001, Vice President Al Gore presided over the recount session of the 2000 presidential election, which he narrowly lost to Republican George W. Bush. Gore had to overrule several misplaced Democratic objections with hammer blows.
In 2017, Biden, as vice president, presided over the recount that declared Trump the winner. Biden also dismissed objections from House Democrats who did not have Senate support.
How does the session develop?
The president opens and presents the certificates of electoral votes in alphabetical order of the states.
Then, tellers appointed by the House and Senate, members of both parties, read each certificate aloud and record and count the votes. At the end, the president announces who has received the majority of votes for president and vice president.
What happens if there is an objection?
After a returning officer reads a state’s certificate, a legislator can stand up and object to the vote from that state for any reason. But the president will not hear the objection unless it is presented to him in writing and signed by one fifth of each chamber.
That threshold is significantly higher than the previous one. Previously, for an objection to succeed, only the support of one member of the Senate and another of the House of Representatives. Lawmakers raised the threshold in the 2022 law to make it more difficult to object.
If an objection reaches the threshold – something that is not expected this time -, the joint session is suspended and the House and Senate meet separately to study it. For the objection to succeed, both chambers must support it by a simple majority vote. If they disagree, the original electoral votes are counted unchanged.
In 2021, both the House of Representatives and the Senate They rejected challenges to the electoral votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Before 2021, the last time such an objection was considered was in 2005, when Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, objected to Ohio’s electoral votes, claiming that there were irregularities in the vote.
Both the House of Representatives and the Senate debated the objection and easily rejected it. It was only the second time such a vote had occurred.
Once Congress counts the votes, what’s next?
After Congress certifies the vote, the president will be inaugurated on the west facade of the Capitol on January 20.
The joint session is the last official opportunity to present objections beyond any challenge before the courts. Harris has acknowledged and never questioned Trump’s victory.