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WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) – Joe Biden will be one formal step closer to the presidency after the Tuesday (Dec. 8) deadline for states to certify their voter rolls at the Electoral College, securing the names of the people who will vote. formally to make Mr. Biden the president.
Once that happens, there is little going back. Congress must, by law, accept those voters if there is no pending litigation, and President Donald Trump’s legal challenges have even less hope of changing the outcome. Voters meet in each state on December 14 to officially cast their votes.
All the states in which Trump tried to challenge the results certified their presidential election counts and designated their constituents for Biden, and he has more than the 270 necessary votes in the Electoral College. Only Colorado and Hawaii are left to certify their results among the states Biden won, but even they cannot change the result.
Federal law says that if a state names its constituents and all disputes are resolved by December 8, the so-called safe harbor deadline, Congress must consider them “conclusive” when it meets in joint session on January 6. to count the votes.
Normally, the deadline passes without notice. But this year, Trump has refused to budge despite Biden’s clear victory with 306 electoral college votes, the same as Trump had in 2016. Trump and his allies have claimed, without evidence, that the election was “rigged. “and he actually won.
Litigation is still pending in Wisconsin and some other states, but Biden’s constituents are valid even if the lawsuits aren’t resolved until after the safe harbor deadline, said Professor Edward Foley, a professor and director of an election law program. in the state of Ohio. University, who has studied disputed elections.
As long as there is only one presentation of electoral votes from a state, Congress must accept it unless it is rejected by both houses, which is not going to happen, he said. Congress can still accept a submission that lacks safe harbor status, he said.
“They will not jeopardize Biden’s inauguration, and they will not jeopardize the ability of voters to meet and cast their vote,” he said of the pending lawsuits.
Burst of cases
Lawsuits brought by Trump’s campaign, led by his attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, in addition to cases brought by Republican groups have been largely dismissed for lack of evidence. They include challenges to results in Arizona and Nevada.
The Trump campaign and its allies are 1-49 in post-election litigation, according to a tally by Democratic attorney Marc Elias, and many legal experts don’t expect the litigation to nullify the results, especially now that they have been certified on the contested battlefield. state.
Even so, several electoral demands are pending and continue in progress. In Wisconsin, the Trump campaign again filed a complaint in state court Monday over the counting of votes in two heavily Democratic counties, days after the state Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempt to take his challenge to the ballots. by mail directly to that court.
Republican-led challenges in Pennsylvania state court are more advanced, but have failed to gain ground. And two federal lawsuits seeking to decertify Biden’s victories in Michigan and Georgia, filed by former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell, failed Monday.
Pennsylvania Republicans, led by US Rep. Mike Kelly, have made a remote request to the US Supreme Court for an emergency order to decertify the Commonwealth vote based on the law that the Republican-controlled legislature passed in 2019 to expand voting by mail. unconstitutional.
Judge Samuel Alito has asked that responses be submitted before Tuesday’s safe harbor deadline, bringing his original deadline forward by one day.
In the Florida Bush v Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election, the court decided to rule before that year’s safe harbor deadline. Republicans have also asked the high court to rule on a Republican lawsuit challenging the Commonwealth and allowing ballots to be mailed before Election Day and received within three days of recount. But the court has not said whether it would take that case, and it only involves about 10,000 ballots, not enough to affect Biden’s margin of victory of more than 80,000 votes.
Electoral College
Giuliani and Ellis have also met with Republican lawmakers in the contested states, encouraging them to ignore the vote totals for Biden on the grounds that the election has “failed” and to name Trump voters who would compete with Biden’s lists.
When American voters mark the ballots in a presidential race, they are actually voting for a candidate’s list of electors who cast the number of electoral votes from that state for the winning candidate. The candidate who obtains at least 270 votes in the Electoral College wins the presidency.
Republican leaders in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Michigan have said it would be illegal to ignore the outcome of the November 3 election in their states. A Dec. 3 statement by the four Republican legislative leaders in Pennsylvania saying they would not name Trump voters prompted angry tweets from Giuliani that they had “let America down” and that he was “ashamed of them.”
There could still be objections to Biden’s voters when Congress meets Jan. 6 to count electoral votes from each state, and Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama has said he intends to do one.
However, a member of the House and Senate must make such a challenge. Even if that happened, each chamber would meet to resolve the objection and it would almost certainly fail, said Professor Alexander Keyssar, a Harvard Kennedy School professor who has studied at Electoral College.
“We are going to see a little action here, but I think it will be inconsequential,” Professor Keyssar said.
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