Vice President Kamala Harris yesterday led the certification of the 2024 presidential election victory of her opponent, Donald Trump.
Congress holds a joint session every four years on Jan. 6 to certify the results of the presidential election. Each state submits its electors for Congress to count the votes.
One senator and one member of the House of Representatives can together object to the counting of a state’s slate of electors in writing.
If such an objection was to have occurred, a two-hour debate in the House and a two-hour debate in the Senate would have ensued, followed by a vote on whether or not Congress should count that state’s electors.
As president of the Senate, the vice president Harris declares the winner.
House Democrats on the select committee who accused then-President Trump of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, didn’t try to block the certification of Trump’s 2024 victory.
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The electoral certification of outgoing President Joe Biden’s win over Trump in the 2020 presidential race was delayed by the Jan. 6 protest, when a mob breached the Capitol.
Once sworn in, Trump will be only the second American to serve two non-consecutive terms in office—having held the White House from 2017 through 2021 and now from 2025 until 2029. Trump received a total of 312 electoral votes, while his Democratic Party opponent, Harris, received 226 electoral votes.
During the 2001 certification, the Congressional Black Caucus systematically objected to confirming the electoral votes won by George W. Bush—each challenging the electoral votes from the State of Florida. These objections were rejected by Democrat Vice President Al Gore—who lost the election to Bush—as they lacked a senator as a second. During the 2025 certification, no Democrats objected to the slate of electors from any state.
Trump has said he plans to pardon some of the more than 1,500 people charged with taking part in the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, when a mob fought with police, smashing its way in through windows and doors and chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” referring to Trump’s then-vice president, in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s victory.