The U.S. congressional joint session to count electoral votes on Monday is expected to be much less eventful than the certification four years ago that was interrupted by a violent mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump who tried to stop the count and overturn the results of an election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
This time, Trump is returning to office after winning the 2024 election that began with Biden as his party’s nominee and ended with Vice President Kamala Harris atop the ticket. She will preside over the certification of her own loss, fulfilling the constitutional role in the same way that Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, did after the violence subsided on Jan. 6, 2021.
Usually a routine affair, the congressional joint session on Jan. 6 every four years is the final step in reaffirming a presidential election after the Electoral College officially elects the winner in December. The meeting is required by the Constitution and includes several distinct steps.
What happens when Congress meets?
Under federal law, Congress must meet on Jan. 6 to open sealed certificates from each state that contain a record of their electoral votes. The votes are brought into the chamber in special mahogany boxes that are used for the occasion.
Bipartisan representatives of both chambers read the results out loud and do an official count. The vice president, as president of the Senate, presides over the session and declares the winner.
The Constitution requires Congress to meet and count the electoral votes. If there is a tie, then the House decides the presidency, with each congressional delegation having one vote. That hasn’t happened since the 1800s and won’t happen this time because Trump’s electoral win over Harris was decisive, 312-226.
How has it changed since the last time?
Congress tightened the rules for the certification after the violence of 2021 and Trump’s attempts to usurp the process.
In particular, the revised Electoral Count Act passed in 2022 more explicitly defines the role of the vice president after Trump aggressively pushed Pence to object to the Republican’s defeat — an action that would have gone far beyond Pence’s ceremonial role. Pence rebuffed Trump and ultimately gaveled down his own defeat. Harris will do the same.
The updated law clarifies that the vice president does not have the power to determine the results on Jan. 6.
Harris and Pence were not the first vice presidents to be put in the uncomfortable position of presiding over their own defeats. In 2001, Vice President Al Gore presided over the counting of the 2000 presidential election that he narrowly lost to Republican George W. Bush. Gore had to gavel several Democrats’ objections out of order.
In 2017, Biden as vice president presided over the count that declared Trump the winner. Biden also shot down objections from House Democrats that did not have any Senate support.
How does the session unfold?
The presiding officer opens and presents the certificates of the electoral votes in alphabetical order of the states.
The appointed “tellers” from the House and Senate, members of both parties, then read each certificate out loud and record and count the votes. At the end, the presiding officer announces who has won the most votes for president and vice president.
What if there’s an objection?
After a teller reads the certificate from any state, a lawmaker can stand up and object to that state’s vote on any grounds. But the presiding officer will not hear the objection unless it is in writing and signed by one-fifth of each chamber.
That threshold is significantly higher than what came before. Previously, a successful objection only required support from one member of the Senate and one member of the House. Lawmakers raised the threshold in the 2022 law to make objections more difficult.
If any objection reaches the threshold — something not expected this time — the joint session suspends, and the House and Senate go into separate sessions to consider it. For the objection to be sustained, both chambers must uphold it by a simple majority vote. If they do not agree, the original electoral votes are counted with no changes.
In 2021, both the House and Senate rejected challenges to the electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Before 2021, the last time that such an objection was considered was 2005, when Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Senator Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, objected to Ohio’s electoral votes, claiming there were voting irregularities. The House and Senate debated the objection and easily rejected it. It was only the second time such a vote had occurred.
What happens next?
After Congress certifies the vote, the president is inaugurated on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 20.
The joint session is the last official chance for objections, beyond any challenges in court. Harris has conceded and never disputed Trump’s win.
