2021 United States Electoral College vote count

The United States Electoral College is the group of presidential electors required by the Constitution to form every four years for the sole purpose of electing the president and vice president. Each state appoints electors according to its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation (senators and representatives). Federal office holders cannot be electors. Of the current 538 electors, an absolute majority of 270 or more electoral votes is required to elect the president and vice president.[1] If no candidate achieves an absolute majority there, a contingent election is held by the United States House of Representatives to elect the president, and by the United States Senate to elect the vice president.

Each state and the District of Columbia produces two documents to be forwarded to Congress, a certificate of ascertainment and a certificate of vote. A certificate of ascertainment is an official document that identifies the state's appointed College electors and the tally of the final popular vote count for each candidate in that state[2] in a presidential election;[3][4] the certificate of ascertainment is submitted after an election by the governor of each state to the archivist of the United States[5][6] and others,[7] in accordance with 3 U.S.C. §§ 6–14[8][9] and the Electoral Count Act.[10][11] Within the United States' electoral system, the certificates "[represent] a crucial link between the popular vote and votes cast by electors".[12] The certificates must bear the state seal and the governor's signature. Staff from the Office of the Federal Register ensure that each certificate contains all legally required information.[13] When each state's appointed electors meet to vote (on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December),[4] they sign and record their vote on a certificate of vote,[9][11] which are then paired with the certificate of ascertainment, which together are sent to be opened and counted by congress.[14]

The 12th Amendment mandates Congress assemble in joint session to count the electoral votes and declare the winners of the election.[15] The Electoral Count Act, a federal law passed in 1887, further established specific procedures for the counting of the electoral votes by the joint Congress.[16] The session is ordinarily required to take place on January 6 in the calendar year immediately following the meetings of the presidential electors.[17] Since the 20th Amendment, the newly elected joint Congress declares the winner of the election; all elections before 1936 were determined by the outgoing Congress.

A state's certificate of vote can be rejected only if both Houses of Congress vote to accept the objection via a simple majority,[18] meaning the votes from the State in question are not counted. Individual votes can also be rejected, and are also not counted. If there are no objections or all objections are overruled, the presiding officer simply includes a state's votes, as declared in the certificate of vote, in the official tally. After the certificates from all states are read and the respective votes are counted, the presiding officer simply announces the final state of the vote. This announcement concludes the joint session and formalizes the recognition of the president-elect and of the vice president-elect.[1] The senators then depart from the House chamber. The final tally is printed in the Senate and House journals.

President Trump, his campaign, and his supporters engaged in numerous attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 United States presidential election.[19]

On December 28, 2020, Republican U.S. Representative Louis Gohmert of Texas and the slate of Republican presidential electors for Arizona filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to force him to decide the election outcome.[20][21] Gohmert argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was unconstitutional, that the Constitution gave Vice President Pence the "sole" power to decide the election outcome, and that Pence had the power to "count elector votes certified by a state's executive", select "a competing slate of duly qualified electors," or "ignore all electors from a certain state."[22][23][24] On January 1, 2021, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle dismissed the suit for lack of standing.[21][25][26] The next day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed Gohmert's appeal in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel.[27]

President Trump had repeatedly raised with his vice president the notion he could delay or obstruct the Electoral College vote count set to occur in Congress on January 6 and was "confused" on why Vice-President Pence could not unilaterally reject electoral votes and overturn the results of the election.[28] Trump had argued that instead of simply acting in his constitutionally prescribed role, Pence could delay the count beyond January 6 and ultimately force the question of who won the election to either the House of Representatives or the Supreme Court.[29] On January 5, Pence told Trump that he did not have the authority to block counting of votes for President-elect Joe Biden's win in the joint session of Congress to count electoral votes.[29]

In December 2020, several Republican members of the House led by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama[30][31] as well as Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri,[32] declared that they would formally object to the counting of the electoral votes of five swing states won by Biden during the January 6, 2021, joint session.[30][31][33] The objections would then trigger votes from both houses.[33] The last time an objection was successfully filed was after the 2004 presidential election, when Senator Barbara Boxer of California joined Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio in filing a congressional objection to the certification of Ohio's Electoral College votes due to alleged irregularities.[34][35] The Senate voted the objection down 1–74; the House voted the objection down 31–267.[34] At least 140 House Republicans reportedly planned to vote against the 2020 counting of electoral votes, despite the lack of any credible allegation of an irregularity that would have affected the election, and the allegations' rejections by courts, election officials, the Electoral College, and others,[30] and despite the fact that almost all of the Republican objectors had "just won elections in the very same balloting they are now claiming was fraudulently administered."[36]

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who on December 15 acknowledged Biden's victory the day after the Electoral College vote, privately urged his Republican Senate colleagues not to join efforts by some House Republicans to challenge the vote count,[30] but was unable to persuade Hawley not to lodge an objection.[37] Hawley used his objection stance in fundraising emails.[38][39] Twelve additional Republican Senators and Senators-elect (Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville, and Kelly Loeffler) eventually announced that they would join Hawley's challenge, while acknowledging that it would not succeed.[36][40]

On January 2, 2021, Vice President Pence expressed support for the attempt to overturn Biden's victory.[36] Neither Pence nor the senators planning to object made any specific allegation of fraud; rather, they vaguely suggested that some wrongdoing might have taken place.[36] Other Senate Republicans were noncommittal or opposed to the attempt to subvert the election results.[37]

A spokesperson for President-elect Biden called the proposed objection effort a publicity stunt that would fail,[41] a statement echoed by Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat of the committee with jurisdiction over federal elections.[36] A bipartisan group of senators condemned the scheme to undo the election for Trump;[41] Joe Manchin (D-WV), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Warner (D-VA), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Angus King (I-ME), Mitt Romney (R-UT), and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said, "The 2020 election is over. All challenges through recounts and appeals have been exhausted. At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans' confidence in the already determined election results."[42] In a separate statement, Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, denounced his Republican colleagues who have sought to overturn the election results, terming them "the institutional arsonist members of Congress" and the submission of objection to counting the electoral votes as a "dangerous ploy" by Republican members of Congress who, in seeking "a quick way to tap into the president's populist base", were pointing "a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government."[43] Other prominent Republicans who spoke out against attempts to subvert the election results included Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House.[41]

Objections to the electoral votes had virtually no chance of success, as Democrats had a majority in the House of Representatives.[30] Although the Senate had a Republican majority, there was no committed majority for overturning the election results.[37] Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and the president of the Campaign Legal Center, wrote that the counting joint session "gives Trump's die-hard supporters in Congress an opportunity to again provide more disinformation about the election on national television."[33] After Senator John Thune, the second highest-ranking Senate Republican, said that the challenge to the election results would fail "like a shot dog" in the Senate, Trump attacked him on Twitter.[36][44]

In December, Trump repeatedly encouraged his supporters to protest in Washington, D.C. on January 6 in support of his campaign to overturn the election results,[19] appealing his supporters to "Be there, will be wild!"[45] The Washington Post editorial board criticized Trump for urging street protests, referring to previous violence by some Trump supporters at two earlier rallies and his earlier statement during a presidential debate telling the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."[46] Multiple groups of "die-hard" Trump supporters planned rallies in D.C. on that day: Women for America First; the Eighty Percent Coalition (also at Freedom Plaza); the group's name refers to the approximately 80% of Trump voters who do not accept the legitimacy of Biden's win); and "The Silent Majority" (a group organized by a South Carolina conservative activist).[47][19] George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone, ardent allies of Trump, planned to headline some of the events.[19] In addition to the formally organized events, the Proud Boys, other far-right groups, and white supremacists vowed to descend on Washington on January 6, with some threatening violence and pledging to carry weapons.[19] Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said that his followers would "be incognito" and "spread across downtown DC in smaller teams."[47] On January 4, Tarrio was arrested by D.C. police on misdemeanor and felony charges.[48]

On January 10, a number of companies (including the financial company Morgan Stanley and the hotel chain Marriott, which each have their own PAC) announced they would cease their political contributions to members of Congress who had voted against certifying the Electoral College results.[49][50]