On the first day of the session of a new House or Senate, a procedure is followed to verify the credentials of, swear in, and seat the newly elected members. These procedures are in theory amenable to interference by various people, including the dean and clerk of the House, the secretary of the Senate, governors of sending states, a majority of the remaining Senators, the Vice President, and so forth. This is normally a purely ministerial procedure, rather than a forum for political or personal discretion, so a deviation from the norm here would be a very big deal on a similar order to the effects of the Civil War; see links below.

• This market resolves YES if a new member generally understood (consensus of media reports, resorting to a poll if necessary) to have been elected, and who was able to attend, has not been sworn in and seated by the end of the first day.

• This market resolves NO if all new members are either appropriately sworn in and seated or were unable to attend.

• If a member is seated but immediately expelled, that is only a YES if it occurs before that member is allowed to vote.

• If a member is prevented from attending by political force (think Pride's Purge), this resolves YES. If a member is prevented from attending by some ambiguous situation (say, a car wreck on the way to the Capitol), this will be resolved by my judgment of whether the prevention was political in character, possibly after some delay to let the news settle.

  • Because January 3rd is a Sunday, members unable to attend due to religious obligations will not cause a YES resolution, provided they are seated promptly thereafter.

• Because my discretion could be required, I will not trade in this market.

For information, see:

• https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL30725.html (House first-day customs)

• https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RS20722 (Senate first-day customs)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unseated_members_of_the_United_States_Congress (past cases where members were not seated)