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Good afternoon! Today, @JakeLahut and I will be live-blogging the joint session of Congress to count slates of presidential electors, led by @VP Pence, where we expect GOP lawmakers to object to multiple states presidential electors for the first time https://www.businessinsider.com/republicans-objecting-to-electoral-votes-in-congress-live-updates-2021-1
In addition to my explainer on the Electoral Count Act process for objecting to electors from yesterday, which you should go check out, here’s a little thread rundown of what we can expect to see today https://www.businessinsider.com/how-gop-lawmakers-will-object-to-electoral-votes-on-wednesday-2021-1
As a quick terminology note, you may see some places refer to today’s events as “certification,” but Congress isn’t really certifying anything — they’re just counting slates of electors that have already been certified in the states
Pence’s role is purely procedural. There will be four tellers, two from each party, who will read out every state’s certificate of their electoral votes out of a special box. Unless one member from each chamber raises an objection, the states’ slate of electors is accepted
Per reporting from @poliitco and other outlets, it seems like the GOP has enough support from representatives and senators to object to slates of Biden electors from Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania (could be more or fewer depending on how the day goes)
When it comes to objections, objectors have to challenge each state at a time, in alphabetical order. They can’t challenge multiple states at once, all Biden states at once, or pick and choose which state they want to object to first out of the alphabetical order
Because Arizona is the 3rd state in alphabetical order, the first objection could come pretty soon in the afternoon. The joint session can’t move on to Arkansas until both chambers debate and vote on the objection to Arizona, can't move on to Hawaii after resolving Georgia, etc
When an objection is raised, the Senators leave the joint session in the House chamber, and go back to the Senate chamber. Each chamber debates the objection for no more than 2 hours before they vote — both have to vote by simple majority to reject a state’s slate of electors
