On January 6, Congress will count the electoral votes and determine who won the presidential election. The House of Representatives and the Senate agreed upon the rules on Jan. 3, outlining how the counting of the votes will proceed. The joint session will be the last step in finalizing the outcome of the race. But the procedure will not be unopposed.

Joint Session Rules

On Jan. 3, Congress passed the rules through a voice vote used in both chambers of the legislature. Vice President Mike Pence, who serves as the president of the Senate, will open “all the certificates and papers purporting to be certificates of the electoral votes,” according to the guidance. The papers will be addressed in alphabetical order.

The Epoch Times reported:

“This is when dozens of Republicans—50 representatives and 12 senators, according to an Epoch Times tally—are planning to object to some certificates, alleging election irregularities including voter fraud and failure to follow state election laws.

“That will trigger a withdrawal from the joint session and a two-hour debate, followed by votes in each chamber. Only with a majority vote from both the House and the Senate would a challenge be upheld, which even supporters find unlikely, considering Democrats who control the House and Senate Republican leadership, including [Mitch] McConnell, have expressed disapproval with the plan to object.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sent a letter to her colleagues acknowledging that objections are allowed, but that former Vice President Joe Biden “will be officially declared the next president.”

She added: “On Monday, we will have a clearer picture of how many state votes will be subject to an objection. Our choice is not to use the forum to debate the presidency of Donald Trump.”

Several House Republicans have already indicated that they will lodge objections with their colleagues, declaring that some states are “facing serious allegations of voter fraud and violations of their own state law.”

They continued:

“[T]his action is not taken lightly and comes after extensive study and research. Kansans deserve to know that all legal, and only legal, votes were counted. We hope our actions begin to restore the confidence of tens of millions of our fellow Americans that feel their sacred right to vote is under attack.”

A group of GOP lawmakers recently drafted a letter announcing that they will dispute the result of the race in battleground states during the joint session. They argued that “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities” motivated them to challenge the outcome.

But another group of Republican lawmakers, which includes several staunch Trump allies, stated that they would not join the effort to overturn the election results. In a statement, they wrote:

“Of the six states as to which questions have been raised, five have legislatures that are controlled by Republicans, and they all have the power to send a new slate of electoral votes to Congress if they deem such action appropriate under state law. Unless that happens between now and Jan. 6, 2021, Congress will have no authority to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.”

Is It Over?

Even though several GOP lawmakers plan to object to the results of the presidential election, it is unlikely that they will succeed in having any electoral votes thrown out. They simply do not have the support needed to win in either chamber of Congress.

While many Trump supporters are still holding out hope, it appears that the proceedings on Jan. 6 will seal the deal for the former vice president. Unfortunately, since there was never a real investigation into the many affidavits and incident reports alleging fraudulent activity at the polls, there will always be a cloud of ambiguity over the 2020 presidential election, with half of the country believing that the race was not free and fair.

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Read more from Jeff Charles.