The voters voted. States counted the votes. Challenges were heard and rejected. The Electoral College made the victory of President Joe Biden completely official.
The time for President Trump’s unfounded allegations has passed, but that doesn’t mean the drama is over. Lawyers follow an ancient timeline that outlines the Constitution and U.S. law to make Biden president.
Just as it was then – Vice President Biden oversees the counting of election votes that the White House gave Trump in 2017, now Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s loyalist soldier four years ago, which will announce the vote that officially makes Biden the winner. Read more about it here.
And Republicans must choose how deeply they want to follow Trump into his rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.
Lawyers will be able to raise objections to the vote – just as some Democrats did in 2017. But while those protests were easily dismissed in 2017, Republican elders, if they choose, could drag out the process this year, and get the House and Senate to vote on individual points.
Here’s an explanation of what’s happening today:
- Election votes are counted in Congress.
- Members of the House and the Senate meet in the chamber of the House. The President of the Senate – Pence – presides over the session and the election votes are read and counted in alphabetical order by two office bearers each from the House and the Senate.
- They then hand over the pennies to Pence, who will announce the results and listen for complaints.
- If there are objections, they will be considered separately by the House and the Senate to decide how these votes will be counted.
- There are 538 election votes – one for every contact and grandfather as well as three for Washington, DC. If a candidate does not get a majority – that is 270 – the election is decided by the 435 members of the House. Each state gets a vote. So while there are more Democrats in the House, Republicans are, as now, in control of more state representative bodies, so it is possible that the House could elect Trump even though there is a Democratic majority.
- The House will be until noon on Jan. 20 to elect the President. If they can’t, the vice president or next person would be eligible for the primary succession series.