Congress's Joint Session to certify the electoral results is such a formal hearing. The Constitution requires the Vice President, acting as President of the Senate, to “open all the certificates” of the electoral results “in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives.”
U.S. Const., art. II, § 1, cl. 3;
id. amend. XII. The “votes shall then be counted.”
Id. The Electoral Count Act, Pub. L. No. 45-90, 24 Stat. 373 (1887), specifies the procedures to be followed. A Joint Session of the Senate and the House of Representatives must meet “at the hour of 1 o'clock in the afternoon” on “the sixth day of January succeeding every meeting of the electors.”
3 U.S.C. § 15. The presiding officer (the President of the Senate) opens the certificates of the electoral votes and hands them to tellers appointed by each House, who make a list of the votes.
Id. When announcing each certificate, the presiding officer calls for objections, if any, which must be made in writing and signed by both one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives.
Id. Thereafter, the Senate and the House withdraw to consider each objection, and “each Senator and Representative may speak to such objection or question five minutes, and not more than once.”
Id. § 17. The presiding officer must cut the debate off after two hours.
Id. He also has the “power to preserve order” during the session.
Id. § 18. The Act details where the presiding officer, the Speaker, the Senators, the Representatives, the tellers, and others are to sit in the chamber.
Id. § 16. And it commands that the session “not be dissolved until the count of electoral votes shall be completed and the result declared.”
Id.