In the nation's capital right now, Joe Biden's future is all bound up inside these mahogany boxes.

I think they're very old boxes that, you know, kind of look like treasure chest.

Slate's Jim Newell is going to spend the day reporting about what's inside these boxes.

They might be magical boxes. I don't know the entire history of them.

They contain what's called certificates of ascertainment from the states and the official electoral college count that'll make Joe Biden the 46th president of the United States.

Later today, these boxes will be brought into a joint session of Congress, cracked open,

and then the contents will get tallied up, making Biden's win official.

You know, there's a lot of pomp and circumstance going on with this very ministerial task here.

Right, because it's not like they're certifying it or something.

It's just like they're acknowledging it, right?

Yeah, they're accepting it.

I mean, it's been certified.

It's all done at the state level, and they just are the final link in the process.

It's kind of like the federal government accepting the state's results.

But each state's results will be announced. Someone has the opportunity to raise objections.

If there's no objections, then they're counted. And then once, you know,

every state goes through, the vice president will gavel it shut.

But this year, of course, there are objections, a lot of them, from Republican representatives

and senators who, in a last-ditch effort to please the president, have decided to do what they can to delay the inevitable.

There hasn't, I don't think at least any time in Reese's memory been an episode where there could be so many objections that could just keep the process going.

So no one really knows when

this is going to end. No one knows what day it's going to end. You think it could be multiple

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