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(CNN) – The counting of votes in the Electoral College, a constitutional ritual that is normally a little-noticed curiosity, will become a symbol on Monday of the durability of the American political system while it is under attack by a defeated president seeking to overturn a democratic election.
Voters from 50 states and the District of Columbia will gather across the country to cast their votes, confirming Joe Biden as the rightful 46th president and California Senator Kamala Harris as vice president.
A moment of historic resonance will activate the safeguards that stemmed from the founders’ fears nearly 250 years ago of a monarchical leader wielding irresponsible power to counter President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly disregarded the fundamental principles of American democracy.
Trump’s previous attempts to pressure local Republican lawmakers to produce delegations in swing states that would ignore the will of millions of voters and their electoral defeat failed. So the ballots cast on Monday will confirm that Biden will exceed the 270 electoral votes needed for victory. The ballots will be transmitted to Washington to be counted in Congress on January 6, when a rearguard built – but almost certainly useless – of Republican legislators can expose a large part of the party that has also turned against the democratic principles that underpin elections. free and fair.
Despite the certainty of the constitutional choreography that will confirm the defeat of Trump, several reprimands from the Supreme Court and multiple judicial defeats, he refuses to accept reality and put the country before accepting defeat.
“It’s not over … we’re going to keep moving forward,” Trump told Fox News in an interview recorded Saturday, before tweeting Sunday that the nation’s top bench had “cowed” by ruling on Friday that Texas was not in a position to act. file a case on your behalf.
Veteran Republican election attorney Ben Ginsberg told CNN’s Ana Cabrera on Sunday that the Supreme Court’s sharp dismissals of Trump’s cases were “the briefest possible summary of the dismissals. That’s a sign in legal jargon that says ‘don’t waste our time with these theories you’re spitting out.’
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Biden to speak after Electoral College vote
After the lists of electors formally selected by voters in the indirect presidential election system in November fulfill their duties on Monday, Biden plans to deliver a speech on the resistance of American democracy. It will be his latest effort to unite a fractured nation even as the outgoing president seeks to condemn his legitimacy with unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.
The process will confirm, once again, that Biden will take office on January 20 at noon, ending the presidency of a Trump term, a fact that some, but clearly not all, senior Republicans agree on. which is now inevitable.
“I’ll just say that obviously he’s the president-elect. He has 270 votes in the electoral college, “Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said on CNN’s” State of the Union “on Sunday, confronting Trump in a way that many colleagues still refuse to do.
In fact, 126 of Cassidy’s Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives, including minority leader Kevin McCarthy, signed the desperate lawsuit that the Supreme Court rejected last week and that an ally, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, criticized as an “absurd” on ABC News “This Week.”
Since the election, Trump has made wild claims that he won by big in states where he clearly lost to Biden. Judges have treated his frivolous claims of fraud with contempt. He has turned against most of the Supreme Court he built because it did not listen to his fanciful cases. And now, the president is even considering firing his ultra-loyal Attorney General William Barr, who pointed to the truth that there is no widespread indication of electoral corruption that Trump insists cost him a second term.
Trump ignores the pandemic
The president’s obsessive behavior since the elections has coincided with the most extreme and tragic phase of a pandemic that he ignored and denied, and has exacerbated the conditions in which many Americans die every day.
It has done little for rival factions in Congress to join millions of Americans unemployed and hungry due to the pandemic, and lawmakers still cannot agree on a bailout bill that includes extended unemployment benefits. The authorization of the first vaccine, which could begin to be administered on Monday, is a very hopeful step that augurs an eventual return to normal life. And Trump and his administration deserve credit for their role in the rapid development of the doses. Federal health authorities say they can vaccinate 100 million Americans by the end of March.
But it will not be until late spring or early summer 2021 that most people receive the two necessary doses, which means that the deprivations and restrictions will continue for many more months.
Some high-ranking Trump advisers, who have only a few weeks of service left, would be among the first to receive the vaccine in what officials said was an effort to preserve continuity of power, CNN reported Sunday night . That would have meant that White House officials who long ignored the severity of the pandemic, downplayed the use of masks, and scoffed at the social distancing that could slow the spread of the virus, could gain immunity much earlier than most of the population. people in general.
Trump tweeted Sunday night that he is adjusting the timing of when White House officials should get the vaccine, saying they “should get the vaccine a little later in the show, unless specifically necessary.”
“I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but I hope to do it at the appropriate time,” he said.
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A waning fantasy
Monday’s events will test how long the fantasy of a second Trump term can last.
The president’s crusade to disenfranchise millions of voters who legally voted against him is a fitting coda for a presidency in which he has consistently smashed democratic barriers to pursue his own political goals.
His actions have also exacerbated the dilemma for many of his fellow Republicans. Some, like Utah Senator Mitt Romney, have spoken out strongly in favor of democratic principles. But others have contributed to the erosion of Trump’s confidence in American democracy by being wrong and refusing to refer to Biden as president-elect. Others, like Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the second Republican in the House of Representatives, are perpetuating Trump’s fiction that he won the election.
“If you want to restore the trust of millions of people who are still very frustrated and angry about what happened, that is why you have to make the whole system work,” Scalise said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There will be a sworn-in president on January 20, but let this legal process develop on its own,” said the congressman, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has twice closed Republican legal tactics aimed at overthrowing the elections.
Trump’s manipulation has convinced millions of his more than 70 million voters that the election was a sham and could irrevocably damage Biden’s efforts to unify the country. It has also sparked nasty scenes like those in Washington over the weekend, where Trump supporters, including members of the far-right group Proud Boys, clashed with anti-Trump protesters.
Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, who is retiring and does not have to face voters again, said Sunday that the Electoral College votes should mark a watershed moment in Trump’s effort to contest the election.
“I hope it puts the country first,” Alexander said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“It appears that the voters will vote for Joe Biden,” he said, arguing that there should be no question about the election results after Monday.
“We must not waste a day in the transition to get the vaccine,” Alexander said.
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A moment of heartbreak for Pence
It is no wonder that people among the 538 voters representing every state and the District of Columbia rebel. In 2016, for example, there was a record 10 “unfaithful” voters. And there is no constitutional stipulation that forces voters to vote for the candidate who receives a plurality of the popular vote in their state. Still, many states replace or fine voters who rebel. And Trump’s efforts to convince state legislators in states that he lost, like Pennsylvania, and voters in favorable seats were insufficient. Biden’s victory is so broad – 306 to 232 electoral votes – that symbolic defections won’t matter.
Voters are chosen by state parties and exclude federal legislators, but generally include local officials and party graduates. In New York, for example, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will ceremonially cast electoral votes for Biden.
The Electoral College vote, legally mandated, on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, will set up an even more intriguing constitutional ballet on January 6. That’s the time when ballots cast on Monday will be counted during a joint session of Congress, another occasion that is usually superficial but will take on additional constitutional significance this year.
Some Republican members of the House of Representatives have already urged Trump not to budge when he loses the Electoral College on Monday. They also want to hold a debate on January 6 on the results of key states from the fraud allegations. If a member of the House and a member of the Senate object, that process can take place in each house. But it’s unclear if any Republican senators are willing to take that step, which would be just academic anyway since Democrats control the House of Representatives.
The January 6 ceremony will set a particularly excruciating moment for Vice President Mike Pence, who has walked an unworthy tightrope between his own reputation and flamboyant loyalty to Trump for the past four years.
Since it is his job as president of the Senate to count electoral votes, it will be up to Pence to officially declare Biden and Harris the victors of an election that Trump falsely claims was stolen.
