Voters in all 50 states will meet on Tuesday to certify Donald Trump’s second election as president, a process that is usually nothing more than a ceremonial step into the White House for the winner.

Usually there is a lack of drama. But four years ago, on December 20, 2020, Republican activists met in seven states won by Joe Biden – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – to sign false certificates of declaration declaring Donald’s victory Trump and Mike Pence announced. for transmission to the National Archives and to Congress.

Prosecutors have described the intent behind this “fake voter” act as providing a rationale for the vice president to either declare Trump president or leave the election to Congress to decide on January 6, 2021. That day, rioters violated the law at the U.S. Capitol intending to undermine the election results.

The Constitution states that on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December following a presidential election, each state’s presidential electors shall assemble in each state’s capital to cast their votes in the Electoral College for president and vice president. The Electoral College is an artifact of the politics of slavery; was created at the urging of Southern states because it initially strengthened the voting rights of states with larger enslaved populations due to the apportionment value of the Three-Fifths Compromise.

Trump’s re-election in November and the relative acceptance of the results by his political opponents suggest there will be no second wave of shenanigans on Tuesday.

Still, after the Jan. 6 insurrection, the latest regular adjustment to the 248-year-old Electoral College tradition, Congress tightened its language about how the process works. The Electoral Count Reform Act made it clear that state legislatures that use an election to elect a president cannot simply appoint electors after the fact if there is a “failure” of the election.

The reforms require each state’s executive branch to certify an election at least six days before voters are counted, and that certification is final unless a state or federal court rules otherwise. It limited the types of objections members of Congress could raise against voters’ votes. It also ensured that a mob with evil intentions could not change the result by explicitly establishing the vice president’s role in counting votes as a ministerial, ceremonial act.

The only thing the 2022 reforms didn’t do was eliminate the need for states to hold presidential elections.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution states: “Each State shall, in such manner as its Legislature may direct, appoint a number of Electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives which the State may have entitled to serve in Congress… “

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore that states do not have to hold elections at all, but if they do, they must comply with the 14th Amendment’s equal protection rules.

The “ways” state legislatures have elected in the past have included allowing voters to vote by district or allowing legislators to elect themselves—as was the case in the first presidential elections in Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey and South Carolina was the case.

The electors appointed to the college are obliged to vote for the winning candidate. Some people vote for someone else anyway. It is rare – fewer than 100 out of more than 14,000 people over the course of the country’s life. The modern record is seven, set in 2016.

So-called faithless voters have never overturned an election, but dozens of voters over the years have voted for a candidate not affiliated with their party. Thirty-three states and Washington, D.C. have state laws that prohibit voters from casting their ballot for anyone other than the winner of the election. In 2016, four Hillary Clinton voters in Washington state voted for Colin Powell or Faith Spotted Eagle instead and were fined $1,000 for doing so.

Five states make the act of a faithless voter a crime; Under California law, breaking ranks is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison.