The Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala D. Har­ris won the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and will take office on Jan­u­ary 20th, 2021 as the next Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

This fact has been known for two months, yet due to Don­ald J. Trump’s refusal to con­cede the elec­tion — and his enablers’ insis­tence on base­less­ly chal­leng­ing the results at every turn — each cer­e­mo­ni­al stage of the pre-inau­gu­ra­tion process has been unnec­es­sar­i­ly infused with dra­ma, includ­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-required process of count­ing the Elec­toral Col­lege votes that occurs in ear­ly January.

By way of back­ground, Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 1 of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides:

The Elec­tors shall meet in their respec­tive States, and vote by Bal­lot for two Per­sons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhab­i­tant of the same State with themselves.

And they shall make a List of all the Per­sons vot­ed for, and of the Num­ber of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and cer­ti­fy, and trans­mit sealed to the Seat of the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, direct­ed to the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate. The Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate shall, in the Pres­ence of the Sen­ate and House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, open all the Cer­tifi­cates, and the Votes shall then be counted.

And Title 3, Chap­ter 1, Sec­tion 15 of the U.S. Code pro­vides:

Con­gress shall be in ses­sion on the sixth day of Jan­u­ary suc­ceed­ing every meet­ing of the elec­tors. The Sen­ate and House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives shall meet in the Hall of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the hour of one o’clock in the after­noon on that day, and the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate shall be their pre­sid­ing officer.

Two tellers shall be pre­vi­ous­ly appoint­ed on the part of the Sen­ate and two on the part of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, to whom shall be hand­ed, as they are opened by the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, all the cer­tifi­cates and papers pur­port­ing to be cer­tifi­cates of the elec­toral votes, which cer­tifi­cates and papers shall be opened, pre­sent­ed, and act­ed upon in the alpha­bet­i­cal order of the States, begin­ning with the let­ter A; and said tellers, hav­ing then read the same in the pres­ence and hear­ing of the two Hous­es, shall make a list of the votes as they shall appear from the said cer­tifi­cates; and the votes hav­ing been ascer­tained and count­ed accord­ing to the rules in this sub­chap­ter pro­vid­ed, the result of the same shall be deliv­ered to the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, who shall there­upon announce the state of the vote, which announce­ment shall be deemed a suf­fi­cient dec­la­ra­tion of the per­sons, if any, elect­ed Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, and, togeth­er with a list of the votes, be entered on the Jour­nals of the two Houses.

Yes­ter­day, Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021, was the sixth day of Jan­u­ary suc­ceed­ing a meet­ing of the Elec­toral Col­lege. At the pre­scribed hour, the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate duly met in joint ses­sion to enable the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, in the pres­ence of each cham­ber, to open all of the cer­tifi­cates trans­mit­ted by the elec­tors, and count the sub­mit­ted votes.

Not long after the pro­ceed­ings began, an objec­tion was raised by Trump’s Repub­li­can enablers to the count­ing of Ari­zon­a’s Elec­toral Col­lege votes, upon which the joint ses­sion tem­porar­i­ly dis­solved to per­mit the objec­tion to be debat­ed and dis­pensed with by each cham­ber in accor­dance with the afore­men­tioned pro­vi­sion of the U.S. Code, which fur­ther states:

Upon such read­ing of any such cer­tifi­cate or paper, the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate shall call for objec­tions, if any.

Every objec­tion shall be made in writ­ing, and shall state clear­ly and con­cise­ly, and with­out argu­ment, the ground there­of, and shall be signed by at least one Sen­a­tor and one Mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives before the same shall be received.

When all objec­tions so made to any vote or paper from a State shall have been received and read, the Sen­ate shall there­upon with­draw, and such objec­tions shall be sub­mit­ted to the Sen­ate for its deci­sion; and the Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives shall, in like man­ner, sub­mit such objec­tions to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for its deci­sion; and no elec­toral vote or votes from any State which shall have been reg­u­lar­ly giv­en by elec­tors whose appoint­ment has been law­ful­ly cer­ti­fied to accord­ing to sec­tion 6 of this title from which but one return has been received shall be reject­ed, but the two Hous­es con­cur­rent­ly may reject the vote or votes when they agree that such vote or votes have not been so reg­u­lar­ly giv­en by elec­tors whose appoint­ment has been so certified.

Dur­ing the debate over the Ari­zona objec­tion, a ter­ror­ist mob that Don­ald Trump had pre­vi­ous­ly spo­ken to that day smashed its way through the Capi­tol and began to spread out through the build­ing, prompt­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the House and Sen­ate floor cham­bers, as has been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed here and elsewhere.

Hours lat­er, at 8 PM East­ern, Con­gress solemn­ly recon­vened, with the Capi­tol hav­ing been made secure and the ter­ror­ists evict­ed, to resume its elec­toral vote count­ing duties as required by the Con­sti­tu­tion and fed­er­al law.

The Ari­zona objec­tion was over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed down, as was a sub­se­quent objec­tion to the count­ing of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s elec­toral votes.

The Ari­zona objec­tion failed in the Sen­ate by a vote of nine­ty-three to six and the Penn­syl­va­nia objec­tion failed by a vote of nine­ty-two to sev­en.

The Ari­zona objec­tion failed in the House by a vote of three hun­dred and three to one hun­dred and twen­ty-one. The Penn­syl­va­nia objec­tion failed by a vote of two hun­dred and eighty-two to one hun­dred and thir­ty-eight.

Objec­tions raised by House Repub­li­cans to the count­ing of elec­toral votes cast by sev­er­al oth­er states (like Geor­gia and Wis­con­sin) were not enter­tained by Con­gress due to the lack of sup­port from a Repub­li­can Unit­ed States Senator.

With Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence grave­ly stand­ing at one side of the ros­trum and Speak­er Pelosi at the oth­er, the votes of each state and the Dis­trict Colum­bia were read, acknowl­edged as prop­er­ly cast, and accept­ed by Congress.

Late in the wee hours of the night, with the objec­tions dis­pensed with and the count­ing of all the elec­toral votes com­plete, Pence announced that Biden and Har­ris had been elect­ed as Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

On social media, patri­ots who had stayed up to watch cel­e­brat­ed, with some post­ing cel­e­bra­to­ry memes and jokes about Biden and Har­ris hav­ing “won” for the umpteenth time. Of course, Biden and Har­ris actu­al­ly won by secur­ing the elec­tor slates of states rep­re­sent­ing a major­i­ty of the Elec­toral Col­lege back in Novem­ber, plus the elec­toral vote allot­ted to Nebraska’s 2nd Con­gres­sion­al District.

How­ev­er, as not­ed above, since Trump has false­ly claimed vic­to­ry him­self and filed a mas­sive num­ber of unsuc­cess­ful law­suits to over­turn the results in sev­er­al states, it has­n’t felt to many like the elec­tion is tru­ly behind us. Hence, the jokes about Biden and Har­ris win­ning over and over, and Trump losing.

Thank­ful­ly, the law­suits have failed, the Elec­toral Col­lege has vot­ed, and its votes count­ed by Con­gress. Democ­ra­cy has pre­vailed, and the can­di­dates cho­sen by the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States have been prop­er­ly acknowl­edged as the win­ners of the elec­tion. In less than two weeks, it will be Inau­gu­ra­tion Day and the begin­ning of a new era in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, with Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of both hous­es of Con­gress and the pres­i­den­cy for the first time in ten years.