Senate and House of Representatives to meet today

Later today, the Senate and the House of Representatives will meet

in a joint session to count the Electoral College’s votes.

According to 3 USC §15 titled “Counting electoral votes in Congress” lays out what the procedure will be for today’s joint meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives.

At 1 p.m., the Senate and the House will meet in the Hall of the House of Representatives. The President of the Senate shall be the presiding officer. VicePresident Mike Pence will serve in that capacity.

The electoral votes will be opened, presented, and acted upon in alphabetical order of the States beginning with A, and delivered to Pence. Once all the votes are read and counted, Pence will announce who is elected President and Vice President of the United States.

The person that has the greatest number of votes for President, shall be President. The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-president shall be the Vice-president.

The President of the Senate, Pence, shall call for objections, if any. “Every objection shall be made in writing, and shall state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one Senator and one member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received,” states the US Code.

Once all objections are made, the Senate will withdraw. Those objections shall be submitted to the Senate for its decision. The House of Representatives will do the same. “The two Houses concurrently may reject the vote or votes when they agree that such vote or votes have not been so regularly given by electors whose appointment has been so certified,” states the code.

There is a limit on the time for debating on objections. That limit, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) that was updated on Dec. 8, 2020, is “not more than two hours, during which each Member may speak only once and for not more than five minutes.”

The CRS states that the general grounds for an objection to the counting of an electoral vote or votes “would appear from the federal statute and from historical sources to be that such vote was not ‘regularly given’ by an elector, and/or that the elector was not ‘lawfully certified’ according to state statutory procedures.”

If the House and the Senate do not agree with the objections, then the electoral college outcome on Dec. 14, 2020 will remain unchanged. If the objections fail, the vote (or votes) are counted.

The CRS’S full report can be read here: https://fas.org/sgp/ crs/misc/rl32717.pdf