Did 22 states fail to upload their Electoral College certifications, which were needed to certify election results on January 6, 2025? No, that's not true: The National Archives confirmed that all 50 states and the District of Columbia submitted their Electoral College Certificates for the 2024 election. By law, these results must be reported by the fourth Wednesday in December, which fell on Christmas Day this election cycle. Congress carried out the certification process as scheduled on January 6, 2025.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Threads early on January 6, 2025. The post said:
22 states still haven't uploaded their Electoral College certifications--and the results are supposed to be certified tomorrow.
That. Ain't. Normal.
6 of those states are swing states.
You know, the ones that decide elections...
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Jan 6 20:30:07 2024 UTC)
The post provided no evidence to support its assertion that 22 states failed to upload their Electoral College certifications. Additionally, under federal law, there is no requirement for Electoral College results to be "uploaded," only that they be transmitted "by the most expeditious method available."
National Archives
In a January 6, 2025, email, the National Archives (archived here) -- a U.S. government agency that preserves and shares important records, like election results -- responded to Lead Stories on the claim in the social media post. In a statement that includes a link to each state's "Certificate of Vote," the National Archives Public and Media Communications Staff said:
The National Archives has received all Certificates of Vote, which are paper. After we scan and convert the paper certificates to PDFs, making sure they meet accessibility requirements, we upload the files to our website [archived here]. The National Archives provides these digital copies for public access.
Note that the states send official paper Certificates of Vote to the U.S. Senate, which are used when Congress counts the vote. States also send an official set to the National Archives as part of the official records of the Presidential election.
United States Code
The U.S. Code (U.S.C.), which lists the "general and permanent laws of the United States," spells out the statutory requirements involving presidential elections and vacancies (archived here). Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 12 (archived here) of the U.S.C. specifically deals with the deadline:
§12. Failure of certificates of electors to reach President of the Senate or Archivist of the United States; demand on State for certificate
When, after the meeting of the electors shall have been held, no certificate of vote mentioned in sections 9 and 11 of this title from any State shall have been received by the President of the Senate or by the Archivist of the United States by the fourth Wednesday in December, the President of the Senate or, if the President of the Senate be absent from the seat of government, the Archivist of the United States shall request, by the most expeditious method available, the chief election officer of the State to send up the certificate lodged with such officer by the electors of such State; and it shall be the duty of such chief election officer of the State upon receipt of such request immediately to transmit same by the most expeditious method available to the President of the Senate at the seat of government.
The fourth Wednesday of December in 2024 fell on Christmas Day. The timeline of the full 2024 election process can be seen here (archived here), which includes Congress certifying the 2024 presidential election results on January 6, 2025.
Congress officially confirmed (archived here) Donald Trump as the winner of the presidential election on that date as planned.
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