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WASHINGTON – The Electoral College decisively confirmed Joe Biden on Monday, December 14, as the nation’s next president, upholding his November victory in a state-by-state authorized repudiation of President Donald Trump’s refusal to admit he had lost.
Presidential voters gave Biden a solid majority of 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, the same margin Trump boasted was overwhelming when he won the White House four years ago.
In some states, there was increased security when voters gathered to cast ballots, with masks, social distancing and other pandemic precautions the order of the day. The results will be sent to Washington and accounted for in a joint session of Congress on January 6, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence.
Despite all of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud, there was little suspense and no change, as each of the electoral votes assigned to Biden and the president in last month’s popular vote was officially for every man. On Election Day, the Democrat topped the incumbent Republican by more than seven million in the popular vote nationwide.
California’s 55 electoral votes put Biden on top. Vermont, with three votes, was the first state to report. Hawaii, with 4 votes, was the last.
“Once again in the United States, the rule of law, our Constitution and the will of the people have prevailed. Our democracy, driven, tested, threatened, proved to be resilient, true and strong,” Biden said in an evening speech in which he highlighted the size of his victory and the record 81 million people who voted for him.
He renewed his campaign promise to be a president for all Americans, whether they vote for him or not, and said the country has a lot of work ahead of it on the virus and the economy.
But there was no concession from the White House, where Trump has continued to make unsubstantiated fraud accusations.
Trump remained in the Oval Office long after sunset in Washington, calling out allies and fellow Republicans while keeping track of the Electoral College checking account, according to the White House and campaign aides. The president frequently wandered into the private dining room in front of the Oval Office to watch television, complaining that cable networks were treating him like a mini election night without giving his challenges airtime.
The president had been increasingly disappointed with the size of the “Stop the Steal” rallies across the country, as well as the efforts of the Republican Party to present its own voters lists in the states. A presidential desire for a fierce defense of the administration led to television appearances early Monday by Stephen Miller, one of its fiercest advocates, to try to downplay the importance of the Electoral College vote and suggest that Trump’s legal challenges would continue. until the opening day on January 20.
At the end of the day, he took to Twitter to announce that Attorney General William Barr would be leaving the administration before Christmas. Barr’s departure comes amid persistent tension over Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud, especially after Barr’s statement this month to The Associated Press that the election results were unaffected by any fraud.
In a Fox News interview recorded over the weekend, Trump said that “I am concerned that the country has an illegitimate president, that’s what worries me. A president who lost and lost badly. “
On Monday, in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the six states in which Biden won and Trump challenged, voters gave Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris their votes in discreet procedures. Nevada voters rallied via Zoom due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump’s efforts to undermine election results also raised concerns about voter safety, something virtually unheard of in previous years. In Michigan, lawmakers from both parties reported receiving threats and legislative offices were closed due to threats of violence. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points, over Trump.
Georgia State Police were present at the State Capitol in Atlanta before Democratic voters pledged Biden. No protesters were seen.
Even with the confirmation of Biden’s victory by the Electoral College, some Republicans continued to refuse to acknowledge that reality. However, his opposition to Biden had no practical effect on the electoral process, and the Democrat will be sworn in next month.
Republicans who would have been Trump voters anyway rallied in a handful of states that Biden won. Pennsylvania Republicans said they cast a “procedural vote” for Trump and Pence in case the courts that have repeatedly rejected challenges to Biden’s victory somehow continue to find that Trump had won.
In North Carolina, Utah, and other states across the country where Trump won, his constituents duly voted for him. Voters in North Carolina had their temperatures checked before they were allowed to enter the Capitol to vote. Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes retired as a Trump constituent and was quarantined because he was exposed to someone with Covid-19.
Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated four years ago, were among New York’s 29 voters for Biden and Harris.
In New Hampshire, before the four state electors voted for Biden at the State House in Concord, 13-year-old Brayden Harrington led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance. He had delivered a poignant speech at the Democratic National Convention in August on fighting stuttering that he shares with Biden.
After weeks of Republican legal challenges that were easily dismissed by justices, Trump and his Republican allies tried to persuade the Supreme Court last week to reserve 62 electoral votes for Biden in four states, which could have cast doubt on the outcome. .
The judges rejected the effort on Friday.
The Electoral College was the product of a compromise during the drafting of the Constitution between those who favored the election of the president by popular vote and those who opposed giving the people the power to directly elect their leader.
Each state gets a number of voters equal to its total number of seats in Congress: two senators plus the number of members the state has in the House of Representatives. Washington, DC, has three votes, under a constitutional amendment that was ratified in 1961. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, states award all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state.
The deal struck by the nation’s founders has produced five elections in which the president did not win the popular vote. Trump was the most recent example in 2016. (AP)
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