Harris to certify Trump's election win

A stable and secure democracy depends on making it so obvious to everyone that you accept the result of a vote, that doing anything else becomes almost unthinkable.

This means that we take for granted events which in most of human history would have looked extremely odd.

Earlier this year in Britain we had a complete change of who was in power within 24 hours with no riots, no fuss, no court cases and no arrests because the electorate voted the previous government out and a new one in. Even as someone who liked the previous government and doesn’t like the present one (and like them even less now than I did when they were elected) I see the fact that Britain can have a peaceful transfer of power based on a decision by the people through the ballot box as something to celebrate.

The USA is about to see something even more remarkable.

For the second time this century, a US President will be declared elected by the candidate he beat.

The main role of the Vice-President of the United States is to be the replacement if anything happens to the President, but he or she does have one significant additional function – as chairman of the Senate.

In this role the Vice president certifies and announces the result of a Presidential election – even if he or she was a candidate, for the top job or for re-election.

In 2000 this duty fell to Al Gore, who had to make the following announcement:

"The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for president of the United States is 538. George W. Bush of the state of Texas has received for president of the United States 271 votes. Al Gore of the state of Tennessee has received 266 votes.”

It is anticipated that the current Democrat Vice-President, Kamala Harris, will make a similar announcement in January, declaring Trump elected – a very entertaining moment for Trump supporters and an extremely galling one for Democrats.

On two occasions in US history a sitting Vice President has been elected as the new President and it worked the other way around. Most recently on 4th January 1989 Vice President George HW Bush, the father of George W Bush who followed him into the Oval office twelve years later, certified the 1988 election result and thereby announced his own election as President.

Four year ago, of course, Trump tried to persuade his own Vice President, Mike Pence, to refuse to certify the election of Joe Biden.

Pence recognised that he had no “unilateral authority” to reject the votes of battleground states which had voted for Biden and indicated that he would certify the result. Because of this action, which most people would regard as essential to pass the most minimal standard of basic integrity and honour, Pence was greeted during the January 6th insurrection with chants and banners proclaiming “Hang Mike Pence,” and he has never been forgiven by the more hardline MAGA supporters. Nevertheless he duly did certify the result on 7th January, the day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.

As I wrote at the beginning of this piece, a stable and secure democracy depends on making it so obvious to everyone that you have to accept the result of a vote that doing anything else becomes almost unthinkable. 

Because we therefore tend to take it for granted, I wonder if those who do the right thing, by accepting the result of a vote they don’t like, sometimes get less credit than they deserve. Pence, for instance, paid a price for doing the right thing. Yet as the attempts by various actors on both sides of the Atlantic to frustrate the results of the 2020 Presidential election in the US and the 2016 Brexit vote in the UK demonstrate, perhaps taking it for granted that those who lose a vote will accept the result is not always a wise thing to do.