iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — Voters went to the polls almost two months ago, but the final step of the 2016 presidential election is still outstanding.
A joint session of Congress is slated to certify the electoral votes Friday afternoon, officially ending the 2016 presidential race and electing Donald Trump the next president of the United States.
The 538 members of the Electoral College — the people who cast each state’s designated number of electoral votes — have already mailed their physical ballots to Washington, D.C., but Congress needs to officially count the ballots.
Even Democrats agree there’s no chance that Trump could be denied the White House.
But that doesn’t mean things won’t get interesting — some may take a long-shot tactic that would allow challenges to electoral ballots. Here’s your guide to the process:
So What Happens Exactly?
Vice President Joe Biden, acting as the president of the U.S. Senate, will convene a joint session of Congress at 1 p.m. Friday for the sole purpose of counting the electoral votes.
“The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted,” reads the Twelfth Amendment of the Constitution.
Each chamber will pick two members to keep a scorecard as the physical ballots are read aloud in the joint session. Those four scorekeepers will take turns reading off the votes of each state in alphabetical order, adding that each ballot “seems to be regular in form and authentic as it appears.”
We expect Trump to win 304 electoral votes — far more than the 270 votes required for the White House. Hillary Clinton is expected to take 227 votes and a handful of others will win a couple votes from electors who went rogue in December.
At the end of the alphabetical list of states, Biden will read the scorekeepers’ tally and declare a winner, adding that his statement “shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected President of the United States and Vice President of the United States each for the term beginning on the 20th day of January, 2017.”
And the 2016 presidential election will officially be over.
What Could Happen?
If one U.S. Representative and one U.S. Senator decide to challenge one of the ballots, the two chambers split up to vote on whether to accept the ballot or not.
So far, no members of the Senate have said they plan to challenge any of the ballots, but a few House Democrats say they will be trying to challenge the votes. Rep. Ed Perlmutter from Colorado released a statement saying the protest “is not about trying to stop Donald Trump from becoming President” but “the fact that our liberty, freedom and democracy were compromised by Russia’s intrusion into America’s election.”
No. 2 House Democrat Rep. Steny Hoyer told Rick Klein on ABC’s “Powerhouse Politics” podcast Thursday that he backed the challenge, but he didn’t think a U.S. Senator would join the cause. “If he has the Senator, I will support him,” he said, conceding that “the result would not be any different.
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Federal law says objections must be made in writing at the time the state’s vote are read aloud. Each chamber would have two hours to make a decision before coming back to the joint session, where Biden would announce whether the votes had been rejected. If the chambers disagree, the votes are counted.
It’s also worth noting that federal code doesn’t give any the joint session any room to do anything else: “No debate shall be allowed and no question shall be put by the presiding officer except to either House on a motion to withdraw.”
What’s Happened Before?
The last contested ballot came in 2005 when Ohio’s electoral votes for George W. Bush were challenged. Both the Senate and the House split up and agreed to include the ballot in the count. Electoral votes were also contested in 1969 but were ultimately counted as well.
There have also been a few awkward moments: In 2001, then-Vice President Al Gore had to announce the result that he had lost the election to George W. Bush. Then-Vice Presidents John Breckinridge in 1861, Richard Nixon in 1961 and Hubert Humphrey in 1969 also all announced they had lost the election, according to the Office of the Historian of the House of Representatives.
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