Harris will join former VPs who have certified their own defeats
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Vice President Kamala Harris in the House Chamber ahead of a State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 7, 2024. Photo: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris will join the company of vice presidents who have launched a bid for the White House — and who have had to certify their own loss.
The big picture: The founders' framework of entrusting the affirmation of electoral votes to the vice president lays out a tricky dynamic for the men (and now, women) who must oversee the announcement of their defeat.
- On January 6, 2025, members of the newly sworn-in Congress will count ballots to certify the election results.
- They will operate under the updated Electoral Count Act, which makes clear the vice president is there only to announce the results.
Driving the news: Harris will officially declare her loss to former President Trump, now turned president-elect, as part of her role as the president of the Senate, a chamber that will soon flip red.
- The twelfth amendment instructs that 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."
Friction point: The responsibility has led to controversy over decades of American politics.
- In 2020, former Vice President Mike Pence's role as president of the Senate put him in politically tumultuous territory, when then-President Trump urged him to overturn President Biden's victory.
- Pence has long held that he had no authority to reject votes, saying in 2021, "there's almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."
Zoom out: After the whiplash of the contested 2000 election, former Vice President Al Gore famously had to certify his defeat.
- More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers formally objected to the certification of Florida's electoral votes, arguing an inaccurate vote count in the state tipped the scales for former President George W. Bush.
- Gore rejected the challenges one by one.
Flashback: Former President Nixon (then the vice president) also became a member of the club when he certified his loss to President John F. Kennedy.
- He was asked to select which state of electors to count from Hawaii, NPR reported. One favored him, while a recount had Kennedy on top.
- Nixon allowed the Democratic slate to be counted for then-president-elect Kennedy and certified his opponent's win.
- Eight years later, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey did not attend the certification of his defeat, leaving the Senate president pro tempore to announce that Humphrey had lost to Nixon.
The bottom line: Only 15 of the 49 vice presidents in the country's history have become president, per NPR, eight of whom reached the resolute desk because they assumed office after the incumbent president died.
- If Harris had won, she would have been only the second vice president in modern history to successfully run immediately after their term.
Go deeper: Big red shock: Takeaways from Trump's election night romp
