Counting Electoral Votes: An Overview of Procedures at the Joint Session, Including Objections by Members of Congress
President and Vice President. In 2017, the House tellers were Members who had been elected chair and ranking member of the House Administration Committee that Congress. The Senate tellers were the chair and a Senator who would become the ranking member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.[1]
Counting the Votes and Announcing the Result
After the votes of each state and the District of Columbia have been read, the tellers record and count them. When this process has been completed, the presiding officer announces whether any candidates have received the required majority votes for President and Vice President. If so, that “announcement shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons, if any, elected President and Vice President of the United States” (3 U.S.C. §15).
Expediting the Process of Opening and Reading Votes
The joint session may agree to expedite this process when no controversy is anticipated. In the 1997 joint meeting, for example, the Vice President announced: “Under well-established precedents, unless a motion shall be made in any case, the reading of the formal portions of the certificates will be dispensed with. After ascertainment has been had that the certificates are authentic and correct in form, the tellers will count and make a list of the votes cast by the electors of the several States.”[2] The Vice President proceeded to open the certificates in alphabetical order and passed to the tellers the certificates showing the votes of the electors in each state and the District of Columbia. In each case, the tellers then read, counted, and announced the result for each state and the District of Columbia. According to the Congressional Record, the joint session consumed precisely 24 minutes. A similar process was followed in 2013, when, according to the Congressional Record, the joint session consumed 23 minutes,[3] and in 2017, when it consumed 41 minutes.[4]
The Majority Required for Election
The 12th Amendment requires the winning candidate to receive “a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.” That number normally becomes the same as a majority of the number of electoral votes counted by the tellers.
One exception that has been identified occurred in 1873 when the Vice President announced that President Ulysses S. Grant had received “a majority of the whole number of electoral votes,” even though he also indicated that not all of those electoral votes had been counted. In that case, the two houses, under procedures similar to those described in the section below entitled “Objecting to the Counting of One or More Electoral Votes,” had decided not to count the
- ↑ In 2009, the Senate tellers initially were the chair and ranking member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, but another Senator, who would become chair of the Rules and Administration Committee that Congress, was later appointed in lieu of the Senator who had served as chair in the previous Congress. On the first day of the 111th Congress, the Vice President appointed Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Senator Robert Bennett of Utah to serve as tellers to count the electoral votes (Congressional Record, daily edition, vol. 155 [January 6, 2009], p. S7). On January 8, 2009, the Senate agreed by unanimous consent that Senator Charles Schumer of New York would serve as a teller in lieu of Senator Feinstein (Congressional Record, daily edition, vol. 155 [January 8, 2009], p. S186).
- ↑ Congressional Record, vol. 143 (January 9, 1997), p. 297.
- ↑ Congressional Record, vol. 159 (January 4, 2013), p. H49.
- ↑ Congressional Record, vol. 163 (January 6, 2017), p. H190.
