Electoral College: Now Trump is blooming another defeat

AMany Americans have also lost track of things: where exactly is the United States now on the road between the presidential election and the inauguration of the future mighty man of the world?

Monday today is formally the most important stage between the election, which took place on November 3, and the inauguration on January 20, 2021.

The electoral body meets, the Electoral College – an institution whose sole task is to elect the president every four years. The electorate does not meet in a central location, but in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, regardless of the corona pandemic. In many states they meet in the capital of the respective capital. It is a tradition.

There are a total of 538 voters. The president and vice president are elected in two ballots. There is no doubt about the electoral victory of Democrat Joe Biden, 78, and Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, 56. But since Biden won a majority in the electoral body, incumbent President Donald Trump, 74, has tried to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election.

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Trump’s denial of reality culminated on election night with the counterfactual assertion: “I won.” This was followed by recounts, several failed trials in court, ultimately even before the Supreme Court of the Republican state of Texas. The matter ended with applause: for Texas, Trump, several Republican lawyers, and much of the Great Old Party in Congress. Now Trump is attacking the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. How should it be different?

The irony of the story: Biden has 306 votes in the electoral body that met Monday, as many as Trump four years ago. The incumbent has 232 voters, as many as the failed Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, was able to muster at the time. To become president you need an absolute majority, 270 votes.

Biden’s majority in the electoral body is, unlike Trump 2016, associated with a clear majority of votes at the national level. Some seven million Americans voted more for Biden than for Trump. Victory in “popular vote” it is legally irrelevant, but politically and symbolically significant.

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Another difference between 2016 and today: Clinton quickly admitted her defeat, called the winner of the election Trump, congratulated him, albeit with heavy hearts and with all kinds of complaints since then. Trump, however, has not admitted his electoral defeat to this day, but rather fantasizes about “electoral fraud.” His party repeats these baseless accusations. Most Republican elected officials refuse to do what Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and in the meantime even Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have done: congratulate Biden on his election victory.

Since there is no federal teller in the US, the official vote is the Electoral College all the more important. If the electoral council now elects Biden as president, it will mean another political slap in the face for Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the Republicans. A politically and legally binding defeat awaits him. Trump’s power is waning. In 36 days he will have to evacuate the White House.

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The last time Trump and his people tried that State legislatures, something like the state parliaments of the states, with a republican majority, to reverse the majority will of their people. They were also dazzled by this request.

In most states, voters are legally required to vote for the candidate for which they have been nominated. In other states, voters are formally free. In 2016, five Democrats and two Republicans broke expectations of voting for their party’s candidate.

While American voters vote for the president and vice president of their choice on their ballot papers, they do not vote directly. Rather, they determine the electorate in their state, who in turn elects the president – the electoral council. It was conceived by the founders in the 18th century and is enshrined in the constitution.

George Washington was already Electoral College elected first president. The states are represented there with as many representatives as they have seats in Congress. A special role is played by the District of Columbia, the capital district, which sends three representatives while it does not have the right to vote in Congress. Almost all states (except Maine and Nebraska) award all electoral voters to the winner of the election.

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Voters vote by ballot. Biden and Trump are running for office in one, Harris and Acting Vice President Mike Pence, 61, in another. The election result is certified by the states and sent to Washington, including Congress (and the National Archives). Both houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, will meet on January 6, 2021. You will officially count the votes and also certify them.

Then there is only one more season left until Joe Biden is president and Kamala Harris vice president: the inauguration, the inauguration on January 20, 2021. Biden will raise his right hand in front of the presiding judge of the Supreme Court and take the oath. Then Biden is head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief all rolled into one. The oldest American president of all time.

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The grandstand for the inauguration on the Capitol overlooking the National Mall was installed for a long time. In view of the sharp increase in infections and deaths from Covid, this inauguration will be different than usual. It is not yet clear how exactly.

But Biden, who, unlike Trump, has always taken the epidemic seriously, will not be able to allow a show with hundreds of thousands of visitors in his honor. In doing so, he would counter his own claim, including considerations of a 100-day mask requirement on the first day of his presidency. The United States will soon experience the first largely virtual inauguration in its history. But this Monday first of all Electoral College the word.