How Kamala Harris becomes president

Vice President Harris

Kevin Drum's excellent hed yesterday on his blog:

Republican “fuck you” bill goes down to massive defeat

The comments to his post get into the constitutional issues if, as seems possible if unlikely, Congress doesn't have a speaker to read the election results as per the Constitution.

Interesting comment by "Altoid":

On a strict reading, I think what formally makes somebody president is the action of the VP reading out the tally of electoral votes and declaring who the president is, per the 12th amendment. 

The timetable in the 20th amendment presumes that this has occurred. And the House has to have elected a speaker and adopted rules so it can be ready to choose a president if no candidate has a majority---even if that isn't a real possibility, they have to be organized as a legislative body just in case. Until then they're just a random mass meeting.

The absolutely most interesting sidelight here is that if the House can't pick a president, guess who takes the office? The outgoing administration's VP, that's who.

That provision is for a very narrow case that hasn't [ever] happened yet, but I think that situation is a decent analogy, and so a good guide to what should happen if the House can't get itself organized and pick a speaker.

The presidency really can't be vacant (a survival of the monarchy the office descends from) so somebody has to exercise its authority. 

I'd argue that the 12th amendment says that person would be the current VP.