Electoral College Votes to Certify Biden's Victory Over Trump

Electoral College members from the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona cast their official votes for Democrat Joe Biden on Monday, a moment some Republican lawmakers have said should mark the end of President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results.

Electors cast their votes for Biden and running mate Kamala Harris in a constitutionally mandated procedure occurring in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The final battleground state to cast its Electoral College slate is Michigan, coming later Monday.

The ceremonies usually pass with little notice, but this year, they may help conclude a chaotic election season punctuated by Trump’s refusal to concede and he and his allies’ frequent insistence, without evidence, that the vote was “rigged” against him.

Many prominent Republicans joined the president in declining to recognize Biden’s victory last month, saying Trump had a right to pursue legal challenges. That process will have played out once Biden reaches a majority of electoral ballots with 270. Congress will then officially count the Electoral College votes and declare the winner on Jan. 6.

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, told reporters last week that the election will be “over” once the Electoral College votes.

“The Electoral College obviously brings some finality to this,” Thune said. And Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, said when asked whether the president should concede, “I’ll talk to you December the 14th.”

Retiring Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the election should be over after Monday’s vote, and that he hopes Trump then “puts the country first” and congratulates Biden. But asked on “Fox News Sunday” whether he’ll stop contesting the election after Monday, Representative Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip, wouldn’t say, and insisted “let the legal process play out.”

Electors, who are generally selected by their political parties, are committed to vote for the winner of the popular vote in each state. Biden won 306 electoral votes from 25 states and the District of Columbia. Trump captured 232 electoral votes from the 25 states he won.

Most electors are meeting in their state capitals with restricted access and social distancing because of the coronavirus pandemic. Nevada conducted its meeting entirely by video conference and Arizona didn’t publicly disclose the location of its gathering to keep it “low key.”

Even though the outcome has been decided and more than 50 post-election lawsuits challenging the results by Trump’s campaign and its allies were rejected, the president and some of his supporters continue to say he won based on groundless claims of widespread fraud.

On Monday, Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer tweeted that Republican electors in the state also met at the state capitol to cast votes for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence because a Trump campaign lawsuit contesting the state’s results is still pending. Former U.S. Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania said the Trump electors in the commonwealth also held “conditional” votes in case a court were to overturn the results.

The idea is to send a rival slate of electors for Congress to consider. But there’s only one certified slate of electors that Congress can recognize from a state, and their move is “not going to work as a matter of law,” said Edward Foley, a professor and director of an election-law program at Ohio State University, who has studied disputed elections.

Trump said he’ll continue with legal challenges even after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected the bid by Texas to nullify the election results in four pivotal states -- a case the president had called “the big one.” But he acknowledged that time is running out.

“We’re going to speed it up as much as we can, but you can only go so fast. They give us very little time,” Trump said on Fox News on Sunday.

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