- A joint session of Congress will certify the 2024 election results on Monday
- It means the vice president will formally announce Donald Trump as the winner
When Congress certifies the results of the 2024 election on Monday, Kamala Harris will join a small and rather miserable club: Vice presidents who have had to oversee the formal confirmation of their own defeat
Under the Constitution, the vice president is the head of the Senate, entrusted with the process of declaring the result of a White House election.
That comes on January 6.
And it means Harris, who lost all seven key battleground states to a candidate she called a fascist, must face the final humiliation of declaring Donald Trump the victor.
She will follow in the footsteps of Al Gore, vice president to Bill Clinton, who had to certify his defeat to Republican George W. Bush in 2001 after weeks of legal wrangling about hanging chads and small margins in Florida.
Before him, Richard Nixon (then vice president to Dwight D. Eisenhower) had to sign off on the results of his loss to John F. Kennedy after the 1960 election.
But there is a dodge. Just don’t turn up.
In 1969, Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey recused himself and skipped certification. Instead it fell to the Senate president pro tempore (usually the majority party’s most senior member to announce that Humphrey had lost to Nixon’s second run.
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that she expected Harris to attend the joint session of Congress.
‘I believe that is her plan,’ she said.
Trump supporters have expressed glee at the idea of Harris having to formally declare her Republican opponent as the winner.
‘Kamala has to certify the results of the election Monday….’ conservative comedian Tim Young posted on X. ‘It’s going to be must-see TV.’
Someone going by the handle of MAGA Michelle wrote: ‘The best part about this is that Kamala has to certify her own election ass kicking, bringing back all the embarrassment she must have felt.’
Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said: ‘Nobody gets excited about certifying their own loss, but I think it’s integral to all democracies that there is a peaceful transfer of power.’
He said Harris was not alone in having to perform the role.
‘It has happened to lots of vice presidents,’ he said.
‘Only once in 250 years of our republic was there an assertion than that person had unilateral authority to change the results.’
The process is usually a formality, a final round of vote tallying and the last step in the process of electing a new administration.
The events of Jan. 6, 2021, changed all that. Trump refused to accept defeat and had piled pressure on Pence to override the results and declare his boss the winner.
Pence refused and the result was an angry mob ransacking the Capitol and forcing members of Congress to flee.
The vice president reconvened the session in the early hours of the morning, and affirmed the election results a little after 3:30am.
That experience led Congress to update the Electoral Count Act to clarify that the vice president does not have the power to adjudicate disputes over electors and is there instead to announce the result.
