evidence: Congress’s job is to simply count up each state’s electoral votes — with the vice president presiding over it all in a ceremonial capacity — and officially declare the winner of the presidential election. After that, all that’s left is to inaugurate the next president. The Electoral Count Act is a 140-year-old law that governs what Congress and the vice president should do in the case of a dispute about which presidential candidate won in a state. (A legitimate dispute about who won the presidential election actually happened in 1876.) [...] Trump and his allies twisted this law to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to try to throw out legitimate election results as Pence presided over Congress’s counting of states’ electoral votes.