The Christian church calendar has for centuries noted that January 6 is Epiphany. On the political calendar, every four years, after the presidential election, Jan. 6 is the day appointed to tally the votes of the Electoral College during a joint session of Congress.
Formerly, this quadrennial ritual was little noticed and was simply one of those perfunctory acts to confirm what everyone already knew. But lately, the day has bordered on becoming an American version of Guy Fawkes Day.
Electing presidents is tricky business. In fact, our Constitution creates a procedure to make certain that our chief executive officer has the broadest support across the nation beholden to no small constituency. To do this, the Founders adopted an Electoral College, arguably the only true innovation in the Constitution. This “college” was a gathering of citizens elected within each state who would cast their respective state’s vote for president and vice president. Each state’s certificate of election from its Electors are sent to Washington to be counted.
For the most part, this system has worked well, but in hotly disputed elections this procedure has been scrutinized to reveal inadequacies. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, presidential elections were messy. And, because there was no set procedure in place states sent different certificates for different electors thinking Congress would sort it out. After several controversial elections, Congress passed the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to put in place a procedure for counting the Electoral College votes from each state to certify a winner of the presidential election.
One odd feature of this Act is that Jan. 6 is specifically appointed as the day for a Joint Session of Congress to count votes. Obviously, there are some similarities with Epiphany. So, unless it falls on a Sunday, after each presidential election, a joint session of Congress convenes on Jan. 6 and is presided over by the then sitting vice president as president of the Senate.
The primary role of the vice president is to preside over a public counting of the votes. In reality, both houses of Congress appoint a few members (“tellers”) to tally the votes and report the results from the votes of each state’s electors. Usually this takes very little time and is a mere perfunctory administrative matter akin to a roll call of states.
For years, this worked without much controversy or interest, but as races became closer or as certain states had irregularities in their voting procedures, the ritual of Jan. 6 was more closely regarded.
The election of 1960 created the first modern spectacle of a vice president who had run for president confirming his defeat. Vice President Richard Nixon had lost a very close election to Sen. John Kennedy and on Jan. 6, 1961, all eyes were on him. In an almost macabre public display, people gathered to watch Nixon declare himself the loser. If anyone was looking for a sore loser or other recriminations from his loss, they were terribly disappointed. His grace and statesmanship surprised, if not disappointed, his detractors.
After the votes were counted with the inevitable result, Nixon said: “In our campaigns, no matter how hard fought they may be, no matter how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict, and support those who win. [I]t is indeed a very great honor to me to extend to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson … my heartfelt best wishes, as all of you work in a cause that is bigger than any man’s ambition, greater than any party. It is the cause of freedom, of justice, and peace for all mankind.”
Other vice presidents have also had this unenviable opportunity. Eight years later when Nixon defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the vice president skipped his Jan. 6 appointment to attend a funeral. George H. W. Bush was one of the few sitting vice presidents to confirm his own victory. Vice President Al Gore was not so lucky and presided over a contentious gathering, gaveling down various objections from partisan colleagues. Like Nixon, he too handled himself with grace and dignity, refusing to get caught up in the disgrace of a public spectacle.
Only a masochist would want to be Vice President Kamala Harris this Jan. 6.
Will Sellers is a graduate of Hillsdale College and an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of Alabama. He is best reached at jws@willsellers.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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