Congress will gather on Jan. 6 to certify the 2024 presidential election. Here’s what to know.

Congress will meet Monday — Jan. 6, 2025 — during a joint session to count and record the votes of the 2024 presidential election. But it won’t be anything like four years ago.

This year, the certification is expected to remain peaceful despite the date and largely under-the-radar process taking on historical significance after a violent insurrection led by then-President Donald Trump’s supporters took place at the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

While the U.S. Capitol Police are ramping up security measures ahead of the political ceremony, there’s been no indication from the defeated party — in this case Democrats — that lawmakers will object to the electoral results that delivered Trump’s decisive win in November.

Here’s what to know about Congress’ role in counting the votes and formalizing the winner of the 2024 presidential election, which will officially put a period on the unprecedented race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Election certification is the mandatory process of formalizing and solidifying the results of an election. Voters cast their ballots on Election Day, and winners are often called by media outlets, like the Associated Press, but the results are unofficial until they are certified, according to the United States Election Assistance Commission.

Election results are certified for all elections at the local and state level, according to the Campaign Legal Center. For presidential elections, there are additional steps including the statewide meeting of presidential electors.

People across the U.S. gather in front of their TVs, phones, and computers on Election Night to watch the returns and wait for their outlet of choice to call the races, but the projections made by the media are not official.

In fact, even if 100% of voting precincts have reported their results — the outcome of the election is still not official until the returns have been certified, assuring voters that results are accurate, according to the USEAC.

A joint session of Congress will take place in the House on Jan. 6 at 1 p.m. to count the electoral votes and declare the winners of the presidential election as required by the 12th Amendment. The vice president is the president of the Senate and will preside over the count. The president of the Senate opens the votes of the states in alphabetical order and gives them to appointed tellers who announce each set of results out loud, according to the National Archives.

This means that on Monday, after all votes are recorded and counted, Harris, who lost her bid for the presidency, will declare President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance the official winners of the 2024 presidential election.

But before that can happen, states engage in a thorough process to validate the election results.

States are required to appoint electors in accordance with laws of the state enacted prior to Election Day. In most states, political parties nominate slates of electors, then voters choose the electors in the general election.

After the election, the state’s governor (or mayor in the case of Washington D.C.) prepares seven original Certificates of Ascertainment, which confirms the slate of electors — who will then meet in December — for each candidate with the number of votes each candidate received. The certificates also note the slate that won the highest number of votes.

House and Senate staff meet with the Office of Federal Register to examine the Certificates of Vote in late December.

After the teller announces the results from each state during the joint session, the president of the Senate — the vice president — calls for any objections.

An objection must be submitted in writing and must be supported by members in both chambers of Congress — specifically one-fifth of the House and one-fifth of the Senate. An objection must also clearly outline one of two grounds for objection: “the electors of the State were not lawfully certified under a Certificate of Ascertainment, or the vote of one or more electors has not been regularly given,” according to the National Archives.

If an objection is recognized, the House and Senate head to their respective chambers to consider the validity of any objections, following the United States Code. When the two chambers have voted on the objection, they must immediately reconvene, and may not move on to any other state until the objections are addressed. The total time for debating objections and questions must not exceed two hours in each chamber.

In 2021, six senators and 121 U.S. representatives supported an objection — based on unfounded claims of election fraud — to the presidential election results in Arizona. Once both chambers reconvened their joint session later in the day on Jan. 6 after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, some GOP lawmakers abandoned their plans to object to certain states’ election results, while others carried on.

Pennsylvania’s election results were objected to by 138 House members, all Republicans, and seven GOP senators. Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada also received objections from House members, but were not supported by senators, so no debate was held.

It mostly comes down to rhetoric.

In 2020, many Republican lawmakers promoted baseless claims and conspiracy theories alleging that the presidential election was “stolen” from Trump. It reached a fever pitch when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol — after gathering for Trump’s speech on the Ellipse beforehand — in hopes of interfering with the tallying of electoral votes. More than 140 Republicans, including eight from Pennsylvania, voted to overturn the election results.

Ahead of this year’s certification, there has been no such widespread indication that this rhetoric exists from lawmakers, including Democrats who have been adamant about the peaceful transfer of power and that Trump’s win in November was fair, despite Democrats losing the popular vote by a thin margin of 1.5%, according to The Associated Press.

Democrats, who have staged symbolic objections to GOP presidential wins in the past, are planning to avoid any objections this year in light of the violence at the Capitol four years ago, The Hill reported last month.

Harris also conceded the race a day after Election Day, while Trump has still not conceded the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.