Live Updates: Congress Set to Certify Trump’s Victory as Memory of Riot Looms

Awkward and unsightly as it can be for Ms. Harris, whose personal political long run stays unsure, it’s set to be a calmer and no more death-defying revel in than 4 years in the past when Mr. Trump refused to simply accept defeat and struggled to carry directly to energy after citizens determined to throw him out of workplace. A mob he impressed marched at the Capitol and stormed the building to forestall Vice President Mike Pence from gratifying the obligation that now falls to Ms. Harris.

Not like Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris has made no effort to forged doubt at the election however has as a substitute accepted defeat graciously. Neither she nor President Biden has sought to drive the Justice Division, contributors of Congress, governors, state legislators or election officers to opposite the vote she misplaced, as Mr. Trump did 4 years in the past.

She has no longer filed dozens of court cases that will be tossed out via judges as frivolous or unfounded. She has no longer repeated false fraud allegations or wild conspiracy theories that her personal advisers advised her had been unfaithful.

Nor has she thought to be making an attempt to make use of her position as presiding officer to reject votes for Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance the best way Mr. Trump attempted to get Mr. Pence to do to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris in 2021. (Mr. Pence refused, announcing he didn’t have such energy, and Congress therefore passed a law reaffirming that interpretation.)

The distinction between the 2 Jan. 6 occasions may infrequently be starker. 4 years in the past, the mob ransacking the Capitol chanted, “Cling Mike Pence,” whilst the Secret Carrier rushed the outgoing vice chairman to protection. Ms. Harris, then a senator at the verge of turning into vice chairman, was once at Democratic Nationwide Committee headquarters on the time and in addition needed to be evacuated, when a pipe bomb was once discovered close to a park bench outdoor.

Ms. Harris has in large part remained out of public view because the election amid hypothesis about what her long run might grasp. Some allies need her to run for president once more in 2028, whilst others consider she must as a substitute run for governor of her house state, California, subsequent 12 months.

She has no longer given any public indication about her ideas past announcing she intends to stay lively. In a video message that she launched on Monday, she keen on her responsibility to preside over the election certification, with an implicit nod to the adaptation from 4 years in the past.

“The non violent switch of energy is among the maximum elementary rules of American democracy,” Ms. Harris mentioned within the video. “Up to every other idea, it’s what distinguishes our device of presidency from monarchy or tyranny.”

“These days, at the US Capitol,” she persevered, “I will be able to carry out my constitutional responsibility as vice chairman of the US to certify the result of the 2024 election. This responsibility is a sacred legal responsibility — one I will be able to uphold guided via love of nation, loyalty to our Charter and my unwavering religion within the American other people.”

Ms. Harris isn’t the primary vice chairman to lose a presidential election and preside over its certification. In fashionable instances, two sitting vice presidents who misplaced achingly shut races for president — Richard M. Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000 — needed to stand within the rostrum the place she is going to stand and depend the votes towards them.

Some other vice chairman who misplaced a presidential bid, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, skipped the rite to wait the funeral of the primary U.N. secretary normal, leaving the duty of counting the votes to Senator Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia and the president professional tempore of the Senate. Different vice presidents needed to preside over vote counts certifying their defeat for re-election, together with Walter F. Mondale in 1981 and Dan Quayle in 1993.

Each Mr. Nixon and Mr. Gore had a number of reason to object to the results that they qualified. Mr. Nixon misplaced to John F. Kennedy by about 118,000 votes out of just about 69 million forged. Advisers advised him to problem the effects however he refused, keeping up that it might tear the rustic aside.

40 years later, Mr. Gore in fact received the preferred tally by more than 500,000 votes out of 105 million forged, most effective to fall quick within the Electoral Faculty. After the Superb Court docket ended 5 weeks of recounts in Florida, Mr. Gore approved the verdict of the justices and congratulated George W. Bush.

Each vice presidents carried out the obligation of certifying their defeats with decided humor and style, producing status ovations from contributors of each events.

Noting that it was once the primary time in a century {that a} presidential candidate had finalized the result of an election he misplaced, Mr. Nixon called the situation a “putting and eloquent instance of the steadiness of our constitutional device” and establishments of self-government. “In our campaigns,” he mentioned, “regardless of how hard-fought they is also, regardless of how shut the election might turn into, those that lose settle for the decision and give a boost to those that win.”

When his flip got here, Mr. Gore even again and again ruled out of order efforts via a handful of Space Democrats to object to the Florida vote. “Would possibly God bless our new president and our new vice chairman,” Mr. Gore mentioned after pointing out Mr. Bush the winner, “and might God bless the US of The united states.”