The House and Senate are meeting in a joint session today to count the electoral votes. (Getty)
You can watch a live stream today of Congress’ joint session, where they will count and certify the Electoral College votes. This is the final step in confirming that President-Elect Donald Trump won the presidential election and will be sworn in on January 20 as President of the United States. Although the confirmation of his win is, indeed, expected to occur, there may be some dissenting comments from Congressional Democrats, which could slow down the process. You’ll likely want to watch the whole thing live today so you don’t miss a single moment. If an embeddable live stream becomes available, we will add it to this story.
To watch the live stream of Congress counting the Electoral College votes, tune in to C-SPAN’s livestream coverage online at this link. The count is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Eastern. If you go to the link early, you can sign up to be alerted by C-SPAN when the video is available online.
Starting at 1 p.m., the House and Senate are meeting in a joint session to count the Electoral College votes from each state for President and Vice President, and verify the certificates from each state.
Trump won the Electoral College vote itself handily, with 304 votes to Clinton’s 227. Two electors broke from Trump and turned faithless, but five electors broke from Clinton and turned faithless. You can read all about them in our story here.
Today’s meeting will finalize those results, with the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden presiding.
Here’s the schedule of what is going to happen today:
- The session will open.
- Congress will tabulate the states’ electoral votes. This will be done in alphabetical order.
- Four vote counters (two from the Senate and two from the House) will announce the results.
- A debate can be called if there’s a dispute about the electoral votes from a specific state. But the ballots must be jointly contested by both a member of the House and of the Senate, Fox News explained.
- If a member of the House and Senate dispute the electoral votes, then the House and Senate will meet separately, immediately, and debate for two hours.
- After the debate, they will vote to accept or reject the state’s results.
- A joint session will reconvene after this. If Trump has 270 or more votes, he will win. If enough electoral votes are rejected, then the House will choose the President, who would most likely still be Trump.
Although some Democrats are planning to dispute the electoral results, this won’t likely result in a change in the final outcome. Find out why in Heavy’s story here.
