WASHINGTON — Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee made a last-ditch effort Friday to prevent the election of President-elect Donald Trump, but the Electoral College results were formally certified, and Trump will be inaugurated Jan. 20.

Jackson Lee, D-Houston, coordinated a group of several House members, who lodged a series of protests against the certification of individual states' Electoral College results. But they needed at least one Senate supporter for the request to be viable. Without that, Vice President Joe Biden quickly overruled each objection.

The objections were centered around complaints about the voting and elector ratification process in several states. The small coalition of House Democrats argued that "voter suppression" played a role in the results because of voter ID laws and reduced voting locations. They also contend that some electors were not qualified to serve.

“The highest act of public service and the highest act of civic participation is to vote for a president of the United States of America,” Jackson Lee said after the certification, explaining the decision to protest the results. “If, in that voting, you have glaring matters that speak to the failure of the electoral system, then it should be challenged. And we had several.”

At one point early in the certification process, Biden repeatedly slammed his gavel as freshman Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., continued to try to explain her reasons for protesting the result, eventually declaring: “It is over.” The Republicans in the chamber, who spent much of the rest of the time rolling their eyes at the protest, leaped up in a standing ovation.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., rose to ask one final time if a single senator would join in the objections. None answered the call.

Jackson Lee said her office led the research on the issues, and then she helped to distribute the information to other members who were interested in participating. She directed questions about why no senators signed on to the senators, but she said several were intrigued by the protest.

“As we always know, the Senate is the deliberative body, and so the House researches quickly and the Senate wanted to deliberate more,” she said. “I can only respect that because I look forward to working with them on curing some of the ailments that are going to continue in 2017 that will not go away.”

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the deputy GOP leader in the Senate, called the protest "kind of embarrassing," arguing that the reason no senators signed on was because they did not take it seriously.

After the process was completed, Biden headed straight to the group of House Democrats to hug and make up with them after shutting down their revolt. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., took a photo of Jackson Lee arm-in-arm with Biden and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on the House floor with Jackson Lee's cell phone.

VP Biden and Majority Leader McConnell lead the charge of Senators on their way to House chamber to certify the electoral college: pic.twitter.com/R6OUhYgkgZ — Jamie Lovegrove (@jslovegrove) January 6, 2017

Jackson Lee said afterwards that she wished the Democrats had been given more time to explain their reasoning for the protests, but she understood that Biden had to follow the rules.

House Democratic leaders, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Maryland and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, did not participate in the efforts. But the pair sat next to the group, appearing to provide some guidance at times and motioning for the protesting Democrats to hurry up at others.

"I guarantee you, had Donald Trump gotten 2.8 million more votes than Hillary Clinton, had the Russians interfered in the election to help Hillary Clinton, those galleries would have been full of -- with Trump leading the charge -- angry people saying I want to look into the rigging of this election," Hoyer said afterwards, offering support to the effort.

Cornyn and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told senators not to leave town on Friday until after the process was completed just in case they needed to take a vote on it to overturn the objection.

As Biden wrapped up the process, three audience members in the House gallery stood up to launch their own protest. They were individually escorted out of the room by security officials, while Waters yelled from the floor, pleading with the officials to leave them alone.

Jackson Lee said she played no role in organizing the public protests in the gallery, but she said it almost brought tears to her eyes.

“The American people, many of them, are hurting,” Jackson Lee said. “We know that there will be a peaceful transfer of power, but one of the issues we spoke of was voter suppression and ... the citizens that stood up in the gallery felt the pain that they didn’t believe their vote was being counted.”

The final official vote tally was: