Harris to oversee electoral count, restoring norm that Trump shattered [View all]

Source: Washington Post

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Vice President Kamala Harris has called President-elect Donald Trump a threat to American democracy. She has said he is a fascist. She has predicted he would abuse the powers of the presidency. She has warned that he should “never again stand behind the seal of the president of the United States.”

But on Monday, in her constitutional role as president of the Senate, Harris will preside over a joint session of Congress that oversees the counting and certification of the electoral college votes affirming that Trump — despite the alarms she sounded during her 107-day sprint to the November election — will again assume the powers and trappings of the presidency.

The task, by statute, always falls to the vice president on Jan. 6 following a presidential election, and this will not be the first time the role may be excruciating. Four other vice presidents who sought the nation’s highest office — including Al Gore and Richard M. Nixon — have had to stand in the House chamber, in front of hundreds of lawmakers, and formalize their own loss. But Monday’s event stands out for the sheer intensity of the warnings that Harris and other Democrats sounded about the dangers of the man whose victory she is set to formalize.

The certification carries additional historical importance because it comes just four years — and one presidential election — after a violent mob, infuriated by Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen by Joe Biden, stormed the U.S. Capitol as then-Vice President Mike Pence presided over the 2020 electoral count. This time, Trump is welcoming the result and Democrats are showing no signs of claiming fraud. Even so, law enforcement officials are planning extensive security arrangements to ensure nothing disrupts the proceeding. Harris intends to make sure the certification goes smoothly, aides say, partly as a pointed contrast to Trump’s unwillingness to do so four years ago.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/04/harris-oversees-certification-trump-victory/