WASHINGTON (AP) – Wednesday’s joint congressional session to count electoral votes has gained additional importance this year as Congressional Republicans allied with President Donald Trump promise to try to undo Democrat Joe Biden’s victory and subvert the will of American people.
Republicans – a dozen senators and many more members of the House – are citing Trump’s repeated baseless accusations of widespread fraud. They say they will officially oppose the results, forcing votes in the Republican-run Senate and Democratic-controlled House that will almost certainly fail.
There was no widespread election fraud, as confirmed by several election officials and William Barr, who stepped down as attorney general last month. Neither Trump nor any of the lawmakers who promised to oppose the count presented credible evidence that would change the outcome.
Almost all of the legal challenges presented by Trump and his allies have been rejected by the judges. The Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-appointed judges, has also denied requests to hear a couple of cases aimed at invalidating the election result in key battlefield states.
The Congress meeting on January 6 is the final step to reaffirm Biden’s victory, after the Electoral College officially elects him in December. The meeting is required by the Constitution and includes several distinct stages.
A look at the joint session:
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE CONGRESS MEETED ON WEDNESDAY?
Under federal law, Congress is due to meet on January 6 to open each state’s sealed certificates that contain a record of their electoral votes. The vows are brought into the chamber in special mahogany boxes used for the occasion.
Bipartisan representatives from both chambers read the results out loud and make an official count. Senate President Vice President Mike Pence chairs the session and declares the winner. The session starts at 13h EST.
WHAT DOES THE CONSTITUTION REQUIRE?
The constitution requires Congress to meet and count electoral votes. In the event of a tie, it is the Chamber that decides the presidency, with each parliamentary delegation having one vote. That hasn’t happened since 1800, and Biden’s electoral victory over Trump it was decisive, 306-232.
HOW DOES THE SESSION WORK OUT?
The two chambers meet at noon to count the votes. If the vice president cannot preside, there is precedent for the Senate pro-tempore, or the most senior senator in the majority party, to lead the session. He is currently Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
The chairman opens and presents the electoral vote certificates in alphabetical order of the states. The appointed “tellers” of the House and Senate, members of both parties, read each certificate out loud, recorded and counted the votes. In the end, the chairman announces who obtained the majority of the votes for president and vice president.
WHAT IF THERE IS AN OBJECTION?
After a cashier reads a state’s certificate, any member can stand up and oppose that state’s vote for any reason. But the president will not hear the objection unless it is in writing and signed by a member of the House and a member of the Senate.
If there is such a request, the joint session will be suspended and the House and Senate will enter separate sessions to consider it. For the objection to be upheld, both chambers must agree with it by a simple majority of votes. If both do not agree, the original electoral votes are counted unchanged.
The last time such an objection was considered was in 2005, when Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Senator Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, opposed Ohio’s electoral votes, saying there were irregularities in the vote. Both the House and the Senate debated the objection and easily rejected it. It was only the second time that such a vote took place.
WHO IS EXPECTED TO OBJECT?
Dozens of House Republicans and a smaller group of Republican senators are expected to oppose counting some undecided states where Trump has alleged fraud, despite the consensus of nonpartisan election officials and even Trump’s former attorney general that there was no none. None of the members presented detailed evidence and none of them opposed the inauguration of Congressional legislators who won the elections on the same ballots.
In the Senate, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley was the first to say he would join the House Republicans. On Saturday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz announced a coalition of 11 additional senators who promised to vote against unspecified state voters on Wednesday, unless Congress appointed an electoral commission to immediately conduct an audit of election results. Hawley and Cruz are among potential presidential candidates in 2024.
Challenges divided the party. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell asked his colleagues not to object, saying last month in a private call that the vote would be “terrible”.
Several other Senate Republicans also criticized the effort, including Texas Senator John Cornyn and South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the Senate’s second Republican. Thune said last month that any objections will fall “like a dog’s shot” in the Senate.
On Sunday, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse said the challenge was “bad for the country and bad for the party”.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF PENCE?
Pence’s role is basically ceremonial and he has no power to affect the outcome, despite Trump’s wishes to the contrary.
The vice president’s role as chairman of the board is often uncomfortable, as it will be for Pence, who will be tasked with announcing Biden’s victory – and his own defeat – once the electoral votes are counted.
Pence will not be the first vice president to be put in an uncomfortable situation. In 2001, Vice President Al Gore chaired the 2000 presidential election count that he narrowly lost to Republican George W. Bush. Gore had to dispel the objections of several Democrats. In 2017, Biden presided over the count that declared Trump the winner. Biden also rejected objections from House Democrats who had no Senate support.
ONCE THE CONGRESS COUNTS VOTES, WHAT NEXT?
The joint session is the last official chance for objections, in addition to lawsuits that have so far proved ineffective for Trump and his team.
“I think there comes a time when you have to realize that, despite your best efforts, you have not been successful,” said Cornyn earlier this month.
___
AP Congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.