LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 8th of January.
This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.
NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.
Time now for Washington Wednesday.
Many Americans got a snow day on Monday, but Congress plowed right on. Outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris certifying her own defeat.
HARRIS: …pursuant to the Constitution and laws of the United States, the Senate and House of Representatives are meeting in joint session to verify the certificates and count the votes of the electors of the several states for President and Vice President of the United States.
MAST: Here now with what made this vote certification different is WORLD Reporter Leo Briceno.
LEO BRICENO: More than 5 inches of snow covered sidewalks in Washington DC on Monday and miles of barriers surrounded the U.S. Capitol.
While many federal employees had the day off, members of Congress, like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, navigated the snowdrifts to get to work certifying the 2024 election results.
TUBERVILLE: I walked through the snow and wore my boots and then brought my shoes with me.
Lawmakers and their staff also navigated fences and police checkpoints staffed by officers from as far away as the New York Police Department…security measures aimed at deterring protests like the one in 2021 that ended with violence inside the Capitol building.
The 45 minute ceremony this time took place without incident.
HARRIS: The purpose of the joint Senate having been concluded, concurrent to Senate concurrent resolution number 2, the 119th Congress, the Chair declares this joint session dissolved.
According to Democratic lawmakers like Colorado Congressman Jason Crow, the peaceful process had little to do with the security measures.
CROW:: It’s January 6 2025 and the key difference today at the United States capitol as we certified the election, from four years ago, is that we don’t have an insurrection mob… beating hundreds of police officers and attempting to overturn a rightful election.
Many Republicans and Democrats are still split on the severity and significance of what happened on January 6th, 2021. On Monday, Georgia Congressman Mike Collins downplayed the threat and seemed to troll readers on X…writing: quote “thousands of peaceful grandmothers gathered in Washington, D.C., to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building.”
Senator Adam Schiff of California counters.
SCHIFF: This was a violent attack intended to stop the transfer of power and not some peaceful tourist attraction.
These aren’t the only views on what happened…Senator Lindsay Graham told the Associated Press that some protesters were violent…though not all. This time, Adam Schiff says Democrats’ acceptance of this election’s results, and the heavy snowfall, made the vote certification much more peaceful.
SCHIFF: This is how the transfer of power is supposed to proceed.
The certification process works like this:
CLERK: The certificate of the state of the electoral vote of the state of Alabama seems to be regular in form and authentic…
The clerk reads the name of the state and its Electoral College votes. Without objection, those results are considered approved and become official.
Lawmakers can object to those results on a state-by-state basis if they think there’s something irregular about how the election was conducted. For example, in 2001, several Democratic lawmakers objected to the results from Florida in the election of 2000.
WATERS: I rise to object to the fraudulent 25 Florida electoral votes.
Vice President Al Gore then asked California Representative Maxine Waters a question.
GORE: Is the objection in writing and signed by a member of the House and a senator?
WATERS: The objection is in writing and I don’t care that it is not signed by a member of the Senate.
GORE: The chair will advise that the rules do care and the signature of the senator…
In 2021, Republican Congressman Paul Gosar of Texas raised a similar objection to the certification of Arizona’s results.
GOSAR: “Mr. Speaker, can I have order in the chamber?”
“The House will be in order”
[Protestor sound]
Texas Senator Ted Cruz joined his objection, and 121 House Republicans voted in support, shortly before protesters breached the House chamber.
Before the 2024 election, Republican lawmakers demanded changes like requiring states to verify proof of citizenship for voter registration, but that legislation did not get past the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Not a single one of those Republicans who objected in 2021 did so on Monday even though not much has changed for election security.
Some Republicans, like Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee, think that Trump’s win was decisive enough to relieve concerns.
BURCHETT: I always say you gotta put enough points on the board that they can’t steal it. And I think we put a lot of points on the board this time.
Other Republicans cited more systemic irregularities present in 2020 that were not a factor in 2024. Here’s Congressman Michael Guest of Mississippi.
GUEST: I voted against that because of the changes that had been put in place by the court during that COVID period that I thought were improper.
So there’s a range to why Republicans believe 2024’s election results are more trustworthy.
There was, however, one key difference between the laws on the books in 2021 and the ones in 2025.
COLLINS: There is nothing more essential to the orderly transfer of power than clear rules for effecting it.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine heard there…before Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 to clarify the role of the Vice President in the certification process. In 2020, President Trump insisted that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to reject the Electoral College votes over concerns of election fraud. Pence and his legal team disagreed. The Electoral Count Reform Act clarifies that the Vice President’s role, along with that of lawmakers in the chamber, is largely symbolic.
FORTIER: I don’t think it was ever in the power of the vice president to do this but the new act clearly says the vice president is there really just as a very ceremonial figure, standing before the joint session of Congress.
John Fortier is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He says the reform act simply clarifies what most legal experts already believe is in the Constitution. The one change it does make is that lawmakers are no longer allowed to individually raise objections.
FORTIER: The old act had if one member of the House and one member of the Senate would object to any question about the electorate, or the slate of electors, then they would have to divide into the House and the Senate separately. They have to consider this debate for several hours and come back. And we did that one time in 2004, and then a couple times in 2020… We didn’t have a majority to actually sustain it, but we did have some substantial number of people voting for those objections.
The new rule raises the bar for raising objections.
FORTIER: So now it’s 20% of each body. So a significant number of House members and a significant number of senators would have to vote to even consider an objection and then ultimately just as before, a majority of both House and Senate would have to agree to make some objection to throw out a slate of electors.
There were no objections raised this time around.
On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris became the fourth such office holder to preside over her own electoral defeat. Here’s what she told the press after the certification:
HARRIS: Today was obviously a very important day. It was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power. … I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it… And today, America’s democracy stood.
Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno in Washington, D.C.
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