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In a joint session Wednesday, Congress began to count the Electoral College votes and confirm Democrat Joe Biden’s win over outgoing Republican President Donald Trump.
The session comes as Trump has refused to concede to Biden and dozens of Republican members of Congress have pledged to object to the electoral votes in key states, despite pleas from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Republicans to abandon the last-ditch effort.
Trump has demanded that his vice president, Mike Pence, refuse to accept the validity of Electoral College ballots for Biden from several battleground states. Pence is presiding over the joint session, and he rejected Trump’s call to overturn Biden’s victory.
The congressional count is typically seen as a formality occurring months after Election Day and weeks after the Electoral College casts its vote for president, but the event holds heightened significance as Trump and his allies have for months attempted to overturn Biden’s victory through false claims of widespread voter fraud.
Republican objections to the electoral vote count could lengthen the certification process by hours or even days, but experts say the eventual outcome will be unchanged.
Congress is meeting just a day after the crucial Georgia Senate runoff that will decide control of the upper chamber in the new Congress. Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock is projected to flip one Senate seat and Democrat Jon Ossoff is leading in the other, according to NBC News.
