Four years after the certification of the election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was interrupted by a violent insurrection waged by Donald Trump supporters, Harris certified Trump’s electoral victory in the 2024 election. The peaceful nature of Monday’s proceedings contrasted sharply with the violent and chaotic events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Harris calmly certifies her own electoral loss in front of a divided Congress

Harris presided over a joint session of Congress on Monday to officially certify the electoral college votes from the 2024 presidential election. “Democracy must be upheld by th people,” Harris said as she went to the House chamber to preside over the certification. Presiding over the joint session with recently reelected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., Harris fulfilled her constitutional duty as vice president and read aloud the results of the electoral college vote as determined by the election in November.

The ceremony demonstrated the partisan divide in Washington. “Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes,” Harris said as the Republican side of the aisle interrupted her to applaud Trump’s victory. After using her gavel to restore order, Harris then continued, reading that “Kamala D. Harris of the state of California has received 226 votes,” leading to a similar round of cheers and applause from the Democratic side of the chamber before Harris again restored order. Similar partisan applause came when Harris read the vice presidential votes for Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. However, unlike in 2021, when several Republican lawmakers held up the certification to push forward baseless challenges to the results of several swing states, no Democrats objected to the 2024 results.

Sharp contrast with January 6, 2021

The routine election certification happened on the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection, offering a stark contrast to the events of four years ago. In 2021, several Trump allies in the Senate and House objected to the results of swing states like Arizona and Pennsylvania that were carried by Biden and Harris, part of a larger Republican plan to delay and possibly overturn the results of the election. Additionally, Trump publicly and privately pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, “to do the right thing” and reject certification of several states’ electoral college votes. Pence refused, as he had no constitutional authority to reject the results. Harris has never suggested that she had the authority to reject the results of the 2024 election and made no attempt to do so Monday.

In 2021, Trump called for a large rally of his followers to happen in Washington, D.C., during the certification and encouraged members of the crowd to march to the Capitol, both telling the crowd to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” and imploring them to “flight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Trump’s followers broke into the Capitol, assaulting and severely injuring police officers, damaging property and delaying the proceedings for hours while Trump mostly watched before belatedly calling his followers to back down. Trump was impeached for the second time for causing the insurrection , though he was not convicted, as most Senate Republicans refused to vote against him. By contrast, Harris did not call a mass rally and her supporters  did not storm the Capital on Monday. There was, however, a “massive snowball fight in DC,” but it does not appear to have been aimed at overthrowing the government.

For now, the norms of democracy have been respected in Washington, D.C., with the vice president doing her part to pass along power to a new administration. It remains to be seen if the second Trump administration will respect those constitutional norms more than he did the first time he was president.

Donald trumpKamala Harris