The vice presidency comes with plenty of indignities, but probably none greater than the one Kamala Harris will endure on Monday when she presides over the certification of her defeat.
Under the Constitution, the vice president takes the gavel when the two houses of Congress meet to formally count the Electoral College votes for president. While not every vice president has chosen to fulfill the duty, Ms. Harris has indicated that she will carry out the task, no doubt painful, of declaring that Donald J. Trump beat her.
Awkward and unpleasant as it may be for Ms. Harris, whose own political future remains uncertain, it is set to be a calmer and less death-defying experience than four years ago when Mr. Trump refused to accept defeat and struggled to hold on to power after voters decided to throw him out of office. A mob he inspired marched on the Capitol and stormed the building to stop Vice President Mike Pence from fulfilling the duty that now falls to Ms. Harris.
Unlike Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris has made no effort to cast doubt on the election but has instead accepted defeat graciously. Neither she nor President Biden has sought to pressure the Justice Department, members of Congress, governors, state legislators or election officials to reverse the vote she lost, as Mr. Trump did four years ago.
She has not filed dozens of lawsuits that would be tossed out by judges as frivolous or unfounded. She has not repeated false fraud allegations or wild conspiracy theories that her own advisers told her were untrue.
Nor has she considered trying to use her role as presiding officer to reject votes for Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance the way Mr. Trump tried to get Mr. Pence to do to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris in 2021. (Mr. Pence refused, saying he did not have such power, and Congress subsequently passed a law reaffirming that interpretation.)
The contrast between the two Jan. 6 events could hardly be starker. Four years ago, the mob ransacking the Capitol chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” while the Secret Service rushed the outgoing vice president to safety. Ms. Harris, then a senator on the verge of becoming vice president, was at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the time and also had to be evacuated, when a pipe bomb was found near a park bench outside.
Ms. Harris has largely remained out of public view since the election amid speculation about what her future may hold. Some allies want her to run for president again in 2028, while others believe she should instead run for governor of her home state, California, next year.
She has not given any public indication about her thoughts beyond saying she intends to remain active. In a prerecorded video message that she plans to release on Monday, she focuses on her duty to preside over the election certification, with an implicit nod to the difference from four years ago.
“The peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy,” Ms. Harris says in the video. “As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”
“Today, at the United States Capitol,” she continues, “I will perform my constitutional duty as vice president of the United States to certify the results of the 2024 election. This duty is a sacred obligation — one I will uphold guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution and my unwavering faith in the American people.”
Ms. Harris is not the first vice president to lose a presidential election and preside over its certification. In modern times, two sitting vice presidents who lost achingly close races for president — Richard M. Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000 — had to stand in the rostrum where she will stand and count the votes against them.
Another vice president who lost a presidential bid, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, skipped the ceremony to attend the funeral of the first U.N. secretary general, leaving the task of counting the votes to Senator Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia and the president pro tempore of the Senate. Other vice presidents had to preside over vote counts certifying their defeat for re-election, including Walter F. Mondale in 1981 and Dan Quayle in 1993.
Both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Gore had plenty of motive to object to the outcomes that they certified. Mr. Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy by about 118,000 votes out of nearly 69 million cast. Advisers urged him to challenge the results but he refused, maintaining that it would tear the country apart.
Forty years later, Mr. Gore actually won the popular tally by more than 500,000 votes out of 105 million cast, only to fall short in the Electoral College. After the Supreme Court ended five weeks of recounts in Florida, Mr. Gore accepted the decision of the justices and congratulated George W. Bush.
Both vice presidents performed the duty of certifying their defeats with determined humor and grace, generating standing ovations from members of both parties.
Noting that it was the first time in a century that a presidential candidate had finalized the results of an election he lost, Mr. Nixon called the situation a “striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system” and institutions of self-government. “In our campaigns,” he said, “no matter how hard-fought they may be, no matter how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win.”
When his turn came, Mr. Gore even repeatedly ruled out of order efforts by a handful of House Democrats to object to the Florida vote. “May God bless our new president and our new vice president,” Mr. Gore said after declaring Mr. Bush the winner, “and may God bless the United States of America.”
