and let’s bring in abc news deputy political director mary alice parks for more on this mary alice this joint session is normally a ceremonial step it’s like opening an envelope at the oscars but president trump has many convinced vice president pence can deny biden’s win what’s pence’s real authority here good morning diane look the president is making claims that are just not backed up in law nor the constitution the vice president does not have the authority of a judge here he will be like you said presenting he’ll be presenting vote totals first the vote totals from the state the electoral college vote totals and then if some senators do in fact object along with those republicans from the house there will be debates and votes in the congress and he will be presenting those vote totals vote totals of the final debates in the joint session we know that democrats and joe biden have the votes to solidify joe biden’s electoral college win from november you know i think it’s worth taking a step back here though that both the federal law around the electoral college as well as the basics of the constitution put the power of running elections in the states and i’m old enough to remember when republicans and conservatives actually stood for giving more power to the states to to run business the way they saw fit even in situations where the constitution is more ambiguous but the constitution is not ambiguous here.
it says that states can decide how to run their elections as long as they follow federal law you know congress does have the power to settle a dispute in a state but again that’s not what we have here we have governors of both parties plenty of republican governors plenty of republican state legislatures that say they counted the votes they recounted the votes they checked their votes and they settled on the votes certified the votes they’re not even presenting a dispute for congress to settle so there’s really um any republican that that offers an objection is really going outside the norms that have been long established in this country well and talking about norms more than 100 republicans in the house and a dozen in the senate say they will object the results that the states have already certified but democrats have objected to electoral college results in previous elections so why is this any different first we haven’t seen so many members of one party dispute in election results since reconstruction you know a very messy and uneasy time in our country right after the civil war in 2004 when one democratic senator barbara boxer from california did file an objection to ohio’s results john kerry had already conceded there was not a question about whether she was trying to overturn the entire election results in this case we obviously have an outgoing president who is demanding that members of his party look for some way to keep him in office even though he lost also i will say that barbara boxer in in that case in 2004 she pointed to a very specific case of um of voter suppression and claims of voter suppression in ohio i think it’s important to remember that these republicans have been extremely vague it wasn’t even until yesterday that we knew which states they were thinking about objecting to they have not made specific claims of what they think were the issues in the votes there this seems to be much more of a sweeping argument on their half that somehow the election was messy when again state officials on the ground just don’t say that that was true and it’s worth pointing out that even those who do say they plan to object have said they’re not doing it with the intentions of overturning the election so even they are admitting that biden is president they just want to call attention to election integrity issues that may or may not exist i think that’s right but again we don’t have states saying that there were election integrity issues and so i think it’s a little bit of a stretch for members of congress in washington to be telling the states that there were issues when local officials on the ground are saying that they have counted and recounted the votes and feel confident about where the votes landed so let’s talk about last night’s elections in georgia now how significant is warnock’s win and how significant is it that we’re still awaiting this other race too close to call yeah you heard stevo’s insomnia there talk about how warnock is making history you know the first black man elected to the u.s senate from the state of georgia he had a really powerful speech last night where he said the 82 year old hands that used to pick someone else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a united states senator incredibly powerful that um of all the men who make history in this way from georgia you have the pastor who is standing at mlk’s pulpit on sunday who’s the one who will take this step as georgia’s first black senator this year you know i think that it’s a big moment for democrats who have long said that if they could get black voters out to the polls in a significant way they would be able to flip the state blue we’re seeing evidence that that might be true georgia does have one of the country’s largest african-american populations you know i think that this is also a sign that the state of georgia is just changing politically we’ve seen huge booms in the atlanta in the atlanta metro area it’s not just the the black population also the hispanic population the asian american population young voters and some traditionally conservative suburbs that have just run away from trump and the republican party and the the remaining race in georgia as we said and we can’t make this more clear it is still too close to call but democrat john ossoff seems to be trying to portray some confidence saying that you know when the votes are counted they think they’ll come out on top he gave a little bit of what sounded like a premature victory speech this morning so so hypothetically if ossoff does win that makes the senate a tie it’s 50 50 in terms of control the vice president then becomes the tiebreaker how unusual is it to be in that position and what does that do for the biden administration yeah it’s incredibly unusual well if that were to happen it would just be one of about three times in our nation’s history where that has been the case you know last time was in 2000 it was actually a 50-50 uh time president-elect dick cheney was very vice president-elect dick cheney was very obviously going to be the tiebreaker vote there to make sure that republicans kept the majority in the senate but 2000 is a really interesting example because just six months after george bush took office actually a republican in the senate switched parties and eventually became a democrat and so the gavel switched over to democrats within that first year so even if democrats have a 50-50 split they might not hold on to it very long all right mary alice parks thanks for the breakdown we appreciate it hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you’d like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don’t forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching
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