Congress formally certified President-elect Donald Trump’s victory with no drama on Monday.
The sedate proceedings cemented Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, who also presided over the certification. Democratic leaders had stressed the importance of a peaceful transfer of power leading up to Monday, even as Trump and his allies attempt to whitewash the events of the insurrection at the Capitol four years ago.
With the memory of rioters in the building still fresh in the minds of many lawmakers and a heavy security presence ringing the Capitol, no Democrats objected to the counting of electoral votes Monday.
“There was a proud but bipartisan tradition of using Jan. 6 to make technical objections within the byzantine electoral college system. And I think all of that got washed away with the attempted political coup and the mass insurrectionary violence of January 6 the last time around,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who had made a symbolic objection along with other Democrats to Trump’s victory in 2017.
Monday’s proceedings also marked the first certification after Congress passed changes to the Electoral Count Act to raise the threshold for mounting objections. Then-President Trump and his allies had sought to exploit ambiguities in the arcane law to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
