The House and Senate will meet Monday in a Joint Session of Congress to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election.
The Capitol riot and setbacks surrounding the certification of the 2020 presidential election turned the often sleepy, quadrennial business of certifying the Electoral College into a full-fledged national security event. Congressional security officials began erecting 10-foot-tall fencing around the outer perimeter of the Capitol complex in recent days. Some of the fences extend beyond the usual “Capitol Square,” which includes the Capitol building itself. One such fence surrounded the outer limits of Russell Senate Park.
One of the great ironies of the American political system is that the person who lost the race for president often presides over his own defeat. In this case, Vice President Harris. Harris will remain vice president until January 20. That also means she will continue as president of the Senate.
Others have carried out this onerous task of certifying their own defeat. Future President Richard Nixon was vice president when he lost to President John F. Kennedy in 1960. Nixon then certified JFK as the winner in January 1961. Former Vice President Al Gore ceded his election to President George W. Bush after the disputed election. 2000 election and tumult over which candidate actually won Florida. Gore was then at the Capitol to seal Bush’s victory in January 2001.
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Dawn light hits the dome of the United States Capitol on Thursday, January 2, 2025, as the 119th Congress begins on Friday. (Clark Invoice/CQ-Roll Name, Inc via Getty Photographs)
This is what the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution says about Congress approving election results: “The President of the Senate, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, shall open all certificates and then the votes shall be counted.” .
This dictates a Joint Session of Congress. This is where the House and Senate meet simultaneously, usually in the House chamber. The Speaker of the House presides alongside the President of the Senate: in this case, Vice President Harris.
But Harris runs the show.
The House and Senate only meet in a Joint Session of Congress to receive the President for the State of the Union and certify the election result. And since the House successfully elected a Speaker on Friday afternoon, the House and Senate can convene the Joint Session. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, will co-chair the session atop the dais in the House chamber.
Things are different compared to this exercise four years ago.
The relatively routine, almost ceremonial certification of the Electoral College changed forever on January 6, 2021, in the wake of the Capitol riot.
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Capitol Police began restricting vehicle traffic on streets around the Capitol complex early Monday morning. Access to the House and Senate office buildings is limited to members, staff and visitors who are there on official business. There will be only a few pedestrian access points to the Capitol grounds. Official tours of the Capitol are suspended.
Speaker Mike Johnson giving press conference and speech with gavel (Getty Images)
Johnson will call the House to order around 1 pm EST on Monday. House Sergeant-at-Arms Invoice McFarland will announce the arrival of Harris and the senators as they enter the House chamber. Members of the House Administration Committee and the Senate Rules Committee will act as “tellers” to assist in the tabulation of electoral votes.
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Harris will declare that the House and Senate are meeting in Joint Session and announce “that the certificates (of election) are authentic and correct in form.”
Starting with Alabama, one of the cashiers is likely to read the following:
“The electoral vote certificate from the State of Alabama appears to be of a common and authentic form. It appears, therefore, that Donald John Trump of the State of Florida received nine votes for President and JD Vance of the State of Ohio received nine votes for Vice President.”
And we continue.
In late 2022, lawmakers made several changes to the “Electoral Count Act” of 1887. Congress initially passed the Electoral Count Act in response to the disputed election of 1876. Several states sent competing lists of electors to Washington . Lawmakers determined that there was no formality in tabulating the Electoral College results.
Democrat Samuel Tilden won the well-liked vote. But President Rutherford B. Hayes won the White House, after a special commission created by Congress presented him with 20 disputed electoral votes.
The presidential race in the United States, Samuel Tilden, the Democratic candidate and Rutherford Hayes, the Republican candidate, 1876. (General History Archive/General Photography Group via Getty Images)
The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 clarified the role of the Vice President in the Joint Session of Congress. President-elect Trump and other loyalists leaned on then-Vice President Pence to prevail in the process. Many demanded that he accept alternative lists of electors from the states in question. The updated law states that the Vice President’s role is simply “ministerial.” The new statute says the vice president lacks the power “to determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate or resolve disputes regarding the proper slate of electors, the validity of the electors, or the votes of the electors.”
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The new law also established an expedited judicial appeals process for litigation involving electoral votes. Finally, the law changed the way lawmakers themselves can challenge a state’s slate of electors during the Joint Session.
The old system required a House member and a senator to sign a petition challenging a particular state’s electoral slate. In 2021, Republicans planned to challenge up to six swing states. Finally they questioned two.
In 2001, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus attempted to challenge Florida’s slate of electors. But they didn’t have any cosponsors in the Senate.
FILE: House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol after the final votes of the week on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Name, Inc via Getty Photographs)
After Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., made her plea to challenge Florida’s electoral votes, Al Gore — again, presiding over his own defeat — asked if the California Democrat had a cohort in the Senate.
Waters responded that he didn’t care and that he “didn’t care.”
Gore then responded with a statesmanlike proclamation that healed the political wounds of the rancorous election he had just lost to President W. Bush.
“The president will advise that the rules do Be careful,” Gore pronounced.
His overthrow of Waters sparked an avalanche of bipartisan applause on the House floor.
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When Congress began certifying the 2004 election in January 2005, a question arose about Ohio’s list of electoral votes. But this time, the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, and former Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., joined forces to force the House and Senate to debate and vote separately on Ohio’s slate. But both the House and Senate rejected his request.
The 2022 law made it more difficult to challenge a state’s election certificates. One-fifth of all House members and half of all Senate members are now required to question what states send.
U.S. representatives of the 119th Congress take the oath of office during the first day of sessions in the House Chamber of the United States Capitol on January 3, 2025 in Washington, DC. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) retained his speakership in the face of opposition within his own party as the 119th Congress holds its first session to vote on a new House speaker. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photos)
The outcome of the 2024 election is not in doubt. No one is expected to force additional revisions of the Electoral College by Congress. And despite the extra precautions, Capitol security officials do not anticipate demonstrations and there will certainly be no violence, unlike in 2021.
In 2021, after riots and two fistfights in the House of Representatives, Pence certified the electoral vote result just before 4 a.m. EST on January 7. This year’s exercise should conclude in about an hour. Vice President Harris will announce that Donald Trump won the election “for a term beginning January 20, 2025.” He will then dissolve the Joint Session.
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And two weeks later, at noon, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts swears in Donald John Trump on the west front of the Capitol for his second term.
