It might appear to be the worst punishment for dropping, however the actuality is that it comes with the job.
So, when Kamala Harris, of all folks, stands earlier than a joint session of Congress and bangs the gavel certifying the electoral votes that can make Donald Trump president — once more — she’ll be fulfilling a constitutional obligation.
It wasn’t what she had in thoughts.
“We must accept the results of this election,” Harris informed supporters at her alma mater, Howard College, on Wednesday, a day after her painful, resounding defeat.
“Earlier as we speak, I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I additionally informed him that we’ll assist him and his workforce with their transition. And we’ll interact in a peaceable switch of energy.”
Being the one to make Trump’s comeback “official” needs to be the last word indignity for Harris after she endured months of lies, insults and racist barbs on the marketing campaign.
However as vp, Harris can be president of the Senate, and her obligations as such couldn’t be made clearer within the Structure.
“The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President,” reads the twelfth Modification.
As merciless because it appears, Harris received’t be setting any form of precedent.
On Jan. 6, 1961, Vice President Richard Nixon needed to certify the election of John F. Kennedy, who had defeated him months earlier.
And in 2001, former Vice President Al Gore had the unenviable activity of certifying the win of George W. Bush, the candidate who beat him by the thinnest of margins in one of the contested elections in American historical past.
It was the final time an incumbent vp ran for president.
That 12 months, Gore received the favored vote, however the electoral vote rely dragged on for greater than two months and wasn’t determined till the U.S. Supreme Court docket, in a 5-4 determination, stepped in and awarded Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Bush.
Candidates want 270 votes to assert victory. Bush received 271.
Gore conceded the election on December 13.
Gore needed to certify Bush’s win.
“The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for president of the United States is 538,” Gore stated from the podium, happening to learn off his personal loss to Congress.
“George W. Bush of the state of Texas has received for president of the United States 271 votes. Al Gore of the state of Tennessee has received 266 votes. May God bless our new president and new vice president, and may God bless the United States of America.”
However the certification didn’t go on with out a hitch.
The ceremony was disrupted by a symbolic protest organized by members the Congressional Black Caucus, who complained that the Florida end result was unfair.
One after the other, 16 representatives, most of them African American, stood as much as voice their objections.
They had been shortly, and respectfully, gaveled to order by the person whose trigger they had been advocating — Al Gore.
As protests go, their demonstration barely made a blip on the radar when in comparison with what would occur on Jan. 6, 2021, when sore loser Trump sicced his MAGA mob on the U.S. Capitol in a bid to disrupt the certification course of after Joe Biden dethroned him months earlier.
Harris hoped to do what Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, had finished in 1989 and certify his personal election win.
As a substitute, Harris will probably be one other footnote, an insult-on-top-of-injury reply to essentially the most ironic of trivia questions
