January 5, 2025
Tomorrow is January 6th….the day the House and the Senate must certify the electoral college votes. In this case – that means – we are likely going to see president elect trump’s victory certified – and because of a new law – there probably won’t be as much drama as we saw back on January 6th 2021. But lawmakers still have the right to challenge a state’s slate of electors…anything can happen.
Here’s what you need to know about what’s about to go down tomorrow.
After the November election – now President elect Donald Trump secured 312 electoral votes and Vice President Kamala Harris secured 226 electoral votes. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to be the president. Just a few weeks ago, electors gathered in each of the states and cast their official electoral votes. Those electoral votes then get transmitted to Washington DC and the constitution says on January 6th the House and Senate must meet in a joint session to count and certify those electoral votes. The sitting vice president who also serves as the president of the senate must oversee and preside over the process.
The law that governs that process is called the Electoral Count Act. It was established in 1887. But if you remember back in 2021 – after then President Trump lost to Joe Biden, Trump and his lawyers tried to argue that the 1887 law was vague and there was some wiggle room that allowed for vice president mike pence to not certify the electoral votes on January 6th and instead send them back to the states. You remember that. Mike Pence famously told trump he did not have that power – he did not send the electoral votes back to the states — there was a riot – you know the rest.
Well – what you might not know – even though I did report on it when it happened – in 2022 congress updated that 1887 law. A bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans passed and President Biden signed into law, the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act. That new law ensures that there would be no more questions and no more wiggle room in how lawmakers are required to count and certify electoral votes.
Not only did the Electoral Count reform Act clarify that the vice president’s role in electoral vote certification is purely ceremonial – it also increased the threshold that has to be met before any lawmaker can challenge any state’s slate of electors.
Under the 1887 law, all it took to challenge a slate of electors was one house member and one senator to join forces and just the two of them could challenge an entire slate of electors from any given state. But under the updated law, it now takes one-fifth of the house and one-fifth of the senate to come together to challenge any state’s slate of electors.
For the record – the law also requires that only one slate of electors can be transmitted to congress from any given state. If you remember back in 2021 there were those “alternate” or “fake” slates of electors that were also transmitted to congress on top of the real ones.
So the question is – will there be any challenges made to any state’s slate of electors? We will have to watch tomorrow and see.
