Thank you for inviting me to talk with you today – this is an important audience for the Department of Justice because your voice – and your work – to promote a culture of compliance across your companies is more important today than ever. Good afternoon. Thank you for that warm welcome. And thank you, Brett, for that kind introduction. Remarks as Prepared for Delivery at the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics’ 22nd Annual Compliance & Ethics Institute

The president is sworn in by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the vice president can be sworn in by another government official of their choosing.Policy Designed to Encourage Disclosure of Misconduct and Hold Individual Wrongdoers Accountable The president and vice president are formally inaugurated and sworn into office. Januat noon: The president is inaugurated Congress eventually accepted the state's electoral votes. After the 2004 election, for example, House and Senate Democrats challenged Ohio's electoral college votes after widespread reports of election mismanagement and voter suppression in the state. However, a member of the House and a member of the Senate must both vote to challenge a given state's electors.Īt that point, both the House and Senate would deliberate on whether to accept that state's slate of electors. Mo Brooks of Alabama, have indicated that they intend to challenge states' slates of electoral votes in that joint session. If no members of Congress object to any of the certificates in writing, the Senate president officially certifies the selection of the president-elect and vice president-elect.Īlready, some Trump allies in the House, including Rep. The majority opinion was in line with the wishes of the Florida legislature, which wanted the state to certify the results and avoid leaving the winner of the state's electoral college votes to Congress. The Court still ruled 5-4 to uphold Florida's certification of the state's electoral college votes for former President George W. On the day of the 2000 safe harbor deadline, the Supreme Court ruled that Florida's varying recount policies violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment by arbitrarily valuing some votes over others. It could have been a factor this year too, if there had been any serious dispute over the 2020 results. The safe harbor deadline came into play during the court challenges over the disputed 2000 presidential election in Florida. As of Tuesday morning, all but a few states - including all the major 2020 battleground states - have certified their presidential results. States certifying election results by the safe harbor deadline can avoid Congress getting involved and resolving a potential dispute over which candidate won a particular state's electoral college votes. The governor then transmits a copy of the results and the names of the state's slate of electors to the National Archives. When the canvasses are complete in each county, local election officials certify each county's result and the governor of each state certifies the statewide results. The Trump campaign has filed more than two dozen lawsuits in multiple states seeking to challenge the validity of ballots, stop vote counting, or get the presidential election results overturned altogether in states that Biden won. The canvassing process immediately after the election is the time in which we saw the most legal challenges over which ballots should count. In every US state, laws explicitly allocate multiple days or weeks for officials to fully canvass and then certify the results, a process that has been occurring in states around the country for the past several weeks.ĭuring the canvassing process, canvassing boards, which are usually composed of county-level election officials, process and tabulate not just the votes of those who voted in person, but domestic absentee and mail-in ballots, provisional ballots, and ballots from overseas and military voters. In most previous years, TV networks and outlets like the Associated Press have been able to call the winner on election night based on the available results and projections from data like exit polls.īut the results of any election are never finalized on election night. For much of America's early history, legislatures directly voted on how to appoint their electors without any input from the voters. Today, all states hold popular elections to determine how their electoral college votes will be allocated, but they aren't required to do so by the constitution or by federal law. States must appoint their electors to the electoral college on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November under a federal law passed by Congress in 1845. November 3, 2020: States appointed their electors Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.

Safe harbor deadline