Washington – The House and Senate will convene on Monday to certify President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election.
It comes four years after a violent mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol to prevent Congress from ratifying President Biden's victory. It appears that Democrats have no plans to get in the way of certifying Trump's victory.
Here's what to expect this time.
How does Congress count the presidential election results?
Senators and House members will meet in a joint session, chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, to tally the electoral votes from the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The Vice President will read the electoral votes aloud and then Congress will count the results of each state to confirm Trump's victory.
This process is usually a formal step before the presidential inauguration on January 20.
Does Congress always count the results on January 6 after the Presidential elections?
Congress is required by law to count the electoral votes on January 6 after each presidential election. However, the date has been temporarily changed by law When January 6 fell on a weekend. In 2013, Congress confirmed that President Barack Obama won the election on January 4, rather than January 6, which was a Sunday.
What is the Electoral Count Reform Act, and what's different about January 6 this time?
Following the Capitol riot in 2021, Congress moved to reform the Electoral Count Act – the 1887 law that governed the counting of electoral votes – to prevent another attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election.
Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act in 2022, clarifying that the Vice President's role in presiding over a joint session of Congress is ceremonial. It also made it more difficult for members of Congress to challenge state voters by increasing the number of members of each house by 20%. Previously, only one member of the House and one senator were required to raise an objection.
Following Trump's defeat in the 2020 election, he and his allies fanned baseless allegations of fraud and argued that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to accept or reject electoral votes. Pence denied that he had any such authority.
As Congress was tallying the votes in 2021, Arizona Republican Representative Paul Gosar joined Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz in objecting to Mr Biden's votes from Arizona.
The joint session was then suspended and the House and Senate debated the objection separately. The process was suddenly interrupted as a violent mob of protesters broke into the building after Trump urged them to march to the Capitol.
Hours later, after the rioters were cleared from the building, both houses voted to reject the objection that would have thrown out Arizona's electoral votes for Mr Biden. The House and Senate then reconvened in a joint session to continue the count. They were later forced to split and debate another objection to the Pennsylvania results, brought by Republican Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. Both houses also rejected an effort to throw out the state's votes for Mr Biden.
What happens if a member of Congress objects to the electoral votes?
This time it will be nothing more than a complaint. In previous presidential elections, one member of each house was required to object to the count to force lawmakers to debate and vote on accepting or rejecting the state's results. The Electoral Reform Act passed by Congress in 2022 increased the cap on the number of members in each house by one-fifth.