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(CNN) – The voters voted. The states counted the votes. The challenges were heard and rejected. Now the Electoral College has made the victory of US President-elect Joe Biden fully official.
The time for President Donald Trump’s repeated unsubstantiated accusations of fraud is over, but that doesn’t mean the drama is over. Lawmakers follow an archaic timeline established by the Constitution and law of the United States to appoint Biden as president.
Just as then-Vice President Biden oversaw the electoral vote count given to Trump by the White House in 2017, it will now be Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s loyal soldier for the past four years, who will announce the vote count that officially converts. to Biden the winner.
(Doug Mills / New York Times POOL PHOTO) NYTSOTU
And Republicans will have to choose how deeply they want to follow Trump in his den of conspiracy theories.
Legislators will have the ability to raise objections to the vote, as did some Democrats in 2017. But while those objections were easily dismissed in 2017, Republican senators could, if they choose, extend the process this year and force the House of Representatives and the Senate to vote on individual points.
This is the timeline of what comes after Monday’s Electoral College vote:
December 23th
Certified electoral votes must reach Washington.
They have nine days to get from their states to the Capitol.
January 3
The new Congress is sworn in.
Members of the House of Representatives and new members of the Senate are sworn in at noon. This is the official start of the 117th Congress. However, both Georgia Senate seats will remain vacant until after a runoff scheduled for January 5.
January 6th
Electoral votes are counted in Congress.
The members of the House of Representatives and the Senate will meet at the headquarters of the former. The President of the Senate – Vice President Mike Pence – will preside over the session and the electoral votes will be read and counted in alphabetical order by two persons appointed by the House and the Senate. They will then give their accounts to Pence, who will announce the results and listen to the objections.
If there are objections, the House and Senate will consider them separately in deciding how to count those votes.
There are 538 electoral votes, one for each congressman and senator plus three for Washington. If no candidate reaches the majority, that is 270, then the 435 members of the House decide the election. Each state gets one vote. So while there are more Democrats in the House, Republicans, so far, control more state delegations, so it’s possible that the House could elect Donald Trump even though there is a Democratic majority.
The Chamber has until noon on January 20 to elect the president. If they don’t, this would be the vice president or the next eligible person in the presidential line of succession.
January 20
Inauguration day.
A new president takes the oath of office at noon. If the president-elect dies between election day and inauguration, the vice-president-elect is sworn in and becomes president. In a contested election, if the House of Representatives has not elected a president but the Senate has chosen a vice president, the vice president-elect becomes interim president until the House holds an election. And if there is no president-elect or vice-president-elect, the House appoints au
