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The House and Senate will meet in a joint session of Congress on Monday to certify the results of the 2024 presidential vote.
The Capitol riot and the mishaps over the certification of the 2020 presidential election turned the often dormant quadrennial matter of certifying the Electoral College into a full-blown national security event. Congressional security officials began erecting a 10-foot-tall fence around the outer perimeter of the Capitol complex in recent days. Some of the fences extend beyond the regular “Capitol Square,” which includes the Capitol building itself. One such fence was located around the outer boundaries of Russell Senate Park.
One of the great ironies of the American political system is that the person who lost the race for the presidency often presides over his own defeat. In this case, Vice President Harris. Harris remains the vice president until January 20. This also means that she continues as president of the Senate.
Others have performed 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 yielded his pick to President George W .Bush after the contested 2000 election and uproar over which candidate actually won Florida. Gore was then on Capitol Hill to seal Bush’s victory in January 2001.
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Light from sunrise hits the dome of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, January 2, 2025, as the 119th Congress begins on Friday. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Here’s what the 12th Amendment to the Constitution says about Congress signing election results: “The President of the Senate, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, shall open all the 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 next to the President of the Senate: in this case, Vice President Harris.
But Harris runs the show.
The House and Senate meet only in a joint session of Congress to receive the President of the State of the Union and to certify the result of the election. And from the House successfully elected a president on Friday afternoon, the House and the Senate can call the Joint Session. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will co-chair the session on the House floor.
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, after the Capitol riot.
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Capitol Police began restricting vehicular traffic on streets around the Capitol complex Monday morning. Access to House and Senate office buildings is limited to members, staff, and visitors on official business. There will be only a few pedestrian access points on the Capitol grounds. Official visits to the Capitol are suspended.
Speaker Mike Johnson gives press conference and gavel speech (Getty Images)
Johnson will call on the House around 1:00 PM EST on Monday. Sergeant-at-Arms Bill 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 “scribes” to assist in the tabulation of electoral votes.
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Harris will declare the House and Senate in Joint Session and announce “that the certificates (of election) are true and correct in form.”
Starting with Alabama, one of the cashiers will likely read the following:
“The certificate of electoral vote of the State of Alabama appears to be regular and genuine. 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 Counting Act” of 1887. Congress initially passed the Electoral Counting Act in response to the disputed election of 1876. Several states submitted voter lists in competition in Washington. Lawmakers determined that there was no formality for tabulating Electoral College results.
Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote. But President Rutherford B. Hayes won the White House – after a special commission formed by Congress presented him with 20 disputed electoral votes.
The Presidential Contest in America, Samuel Tilden, The Democratic Candidate and Rutherford Hayes, The Republican Candidate, 1876. (Universal History Archive/Universal Image Group via Getty Images)
The Election Counting 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 assert themselves in the process. Many demanded that he accept the alternative lists of voters in the states in question. The updated law states that the vice president’s role is simply “ministerial”. The new statute says the vice president does not have the power “to determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate or settle disputes concerning the proper list of electors, the validity of electors, or the votes of electors.”
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The new law also established an expedited judicial appeals process for litigation over electoral votes. Finally, the law changed how lawmakers themselves can challenge a state’s electoral roll during the joint session.
The old system required a House member and a senator to sign a petition challenging an individual state’s electoral rolls. In 2021, Republicans planned to challenge as many as six swing states. Finally two asked.
In 2001, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus attempted to challenge Florida’s voter roll. But they had no Senate co-sponsors.
FILE: House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol after the final votes of the week Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
After Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., made her plea to question Florida’s electoral votes, Al Gore, again presiding over his own loss, asked if the California Democrat had a cohort in the Senate.
Waters replied that he didn’t 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 these rules do cure,” Gore pronounced.
His ouster of Waters drew a big bipartisan round of applause on the House floor.
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A question arose about Ohio’s electoral vote roll when Congress began certifying the 2004 election in January 2005. 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 voter list. But both the House and the Senate rejected his request.
The 2022 law made it more difficult to challenge a state’s election certificates. It now requires one-fifth of all members of the House and one-half of all members of the Senate to challenge what the states send.
U.S. representatives of the 119th Congress are sworn in during the first day of session in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol building on January 3, 2025 in Washington, DC. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) retained his presidency in the face of opposition within his own party as the 119th Congress holds its first session to vote for a new Speaker of the House. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The outcome of the 2024 election is not debatable. No one is expected to force additional revisions of the Electoral College on Congress. And despite the extra precautions, Capitol security officials anticipate no rallies, and certainly no violence, unlike in 2021.
In 2021, after the riot and two close fights in the House, Pence certified the result of the electoral vote just before 4 a.m. EST on January 7. This year’s exercise should be over in about an hour. Vice President Harris will announce that Donald Trump won the election “for a term beginning on January 20, 2025.” He will then dissolve the Joint Session.
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And two weeks later, at noon, the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, is sworn in Donald John Trump on the west front of the Capitol for his second term.
