Congress will convene on Monday – January 6, 2025 – in a joint session to count and record votes in the 2024 presidential election. But it won’t be the same as it was four years ago.
Certification is expected to proceed smoothly this year despite the date and a largely hidden process that is taking on historic significance following the violent insurrection led by supporters of then-President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
While police at the US Capitol If increased safety measures before political ceremony, there was no indication from the defeated party – in this case the Democrats – that lawmakers would object to the election results that gave Trump a decisive victory in November.
Here’s what you need to know about Congress’s role in counting votes and formalizing the winner of the 2024 presidential election, which will officially kick off a period of unprecedented race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
What is electoral certification?
Election certification is the mandatory process of formalizing and recording election results. Voters cast their ballots on Election Day, and media outlets such as the Associated Press often announce the winners, but the results are unofficial until they are certified. according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Election results are certified for all local and state elections, according to the Campaign Legal Center. For presidential elections, there are additional stages, including a statewide assembly of presidential electors.
Why is it necessary to certify the elections?
People across the United States gather in front of their televisions, phones, and computers on election night to watch the election results and wait for the outlet of their choice to call the election, but the media’s predictions are not official.
In fact, even if 100% of precincts have reported their results – the election result is still not official until the results are certified, which gives voters confidence that the results are right, according to USEAC.
What is Congress’s role in certifying election results and how does it work?
A joint session of Congress will be held in the chamber January 6 at 1:00 p.m to count electoral votes and declare winners of the presidential election as required by the 12th Amendment. The vice president is the president of the Senate and presides over the count. The President of the Senate opens the states’ votes in alphabetical order and forwards them to designated tellers, who loudly announce each set of results, – reports the State Archives.
This means that on Monday, after all votes are registered and counted, Harris, who lost her presidential bid, will declare President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance the official winners of the 2024 presidential election.
However, before this happens, countries conduct a thorough process of validating the election results.
The states are there obliged to appoint electors in accordance with the law in force in the country adopted before election day. In most states, political parties designate slates of electors, and voters then choose the electors in the general election.
After the election, the state’s governor (or mayor in Washington’s case) prepares seven original certificates stating which confirms the voter list — who will then meet in December — for each candidate, according to the number of votes each candidate received. The certificates also include the slate that received the highest number of votes.
In slow December, House and Senate staff meet with the Office of the Federal Register to examine voter certificates.
What happens if a member of Congress or the Senate objects to the results?
After the cashier announces the results from individual states at a joint meeting, the president of the Senate – the vice president – calls for any objections.
The objection must be made in writing and must be supported by members of both houses of Congress – specifically, one-fifth of the House and one-fifth of the Senate. The objection must also clearly state one of two grounds for the objection: “the state’s electors have not been lawfully certified by certificate of certification or the vote of one or more electors has not been regularly cast”; – reports the State Archives.
If an objection is granted, the House and Senate will return to their respective chambers to consider the merits of the objection, in accordance with the United States Code. Once both houses have voted on an objection, they must reconvene immediately and cannot move to any other state until the objections are resolved. Total time for discussion of objections and questions must not exceed two hours in each chamber.
In 2021, six senators and 121 U.S. representatives supported the objection — based on baseless claims of election fraud — on the results of the Arizona presidential election. When the two chambers reconvened for a joint session later that day, on Jan. 6, after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, some GOP lawmakers abandoned their plans to object to the election results in some states, while others continued their work.
Pennsylvania’s election results were in he objected by 138 House members, all Republicans, and seven GOP senators. Georgia, Michigan and Nevada also received objections from House members but did not receive support from senators, so no debate took place.
Why is this year’s trial unlikely to proceed as it did on January 6, 2021?
Most often it comes down to rhetoric.
In 2020, many Republican lawmakers promoted baseless claims and conspiracy theories maintaining that the presidential election was “stolen” from Trump. The fever reached fever pitch as Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol – after earlier gathering for Trump’s speech at the Ellipse — in hopes of disrupting the counting of electoral votes. More than 140 Republicans, including eight from Pennsylvania, voted to overturn the election results.
Before this year’s certification, there was no broad indication that such rhetoric existed from lawmakers, including Democrats, who had adamantly supported a peaceful transition of power and that Trump’s November victory was fair, despite Democrats losing the popular vote by a slim margin of 1. 5%, according to the Associated Press.
Democrats, who have expressed token opposition to GOP presidential victories in the past, plan to avoid any backlash this year in airy of the violence at the Capitol four years ago. The Hill reported the story last month.
Harris too he admitted the race the day after Election Daywhile Trump still has not conceded the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
