[ad_1]
WILMINGTON, Delaware: President-elect Joe Biden lashed out at Donald Trump on Monday (December 15) with his strongest criticism since the election, saying the Republican had defied the constitution and the “will of the people” by not accepting the results.
“It is such an extreme position that we have never seen it before. A position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law, and refused to honor our constitution,” Biden said in a speech that was produced. later the Electoral College formally confirmed his victory.
The Electoral College vote, typically a formality, assumed enormous importance in light of President Donald Trump’s extraordinary effort to subvert the process due to what he has falsely alleged was widespread electoral fraud in the November 3 election.
Some Trump supporters had called for protests on social media and election officials had raised concerns about the potential for violence amid the president’s heated rhetoric. But Monday’s vote went smoothly, without major disruption.
READ: US Electoral College Formally Confirms Joe Biden’s Victory Over Trump
California, the most populous state in the United States, placed Biden above the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College when his 55 electors voted unanimously for him and his running mate, Kamala Harris. Biden and Harris, the first woman, the first black person and the first Asian American to become vice president-elect, will take office on January 20.
Biden obtained 306 electoral votes in November compared to 232 for Trump.
“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago,” he said in his speech on the occasion of his victory in the Electoral College. “And now we know that nothing, not even a pandemic, or an abuse of power, can put out that flame.
“In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed.”
Under a complicated system dating back to the 1780s, a candidate becomes president of the U.S. Not by winning the popular vote but through the Electoral College system, which allocates electoral votes to all 50 states and the District. Columbia based on Congressional representation.
In 2016, Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton despite losing the national popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. Biden won the popular vote in November by more than 7 million votes.
Voters are generally loyal to the party and unlikely to break ranks, although sometimes there are a handful of voters who vote for someone who is not the winner of their status. In 2016, for example, seven voters became “dishonest,” a historically unusual number but still far from enough to change the outcome.
Few observers expected Monday’s vote to change the outcome of the election. With Trump’s legal challenges failing, the president’s vague hopes of clinging to power rest on persuading Congress not to certify the Electoral College vote in a special session on Jan. 6, an effort almost certain to fail.
Trump had also lobbied Republican lawmakers in Biden-won battlefield states like Pennsylvania and Michigan to drop vote totals and name their own competing voter lists. But lawmakers largely scrapped the idea.
“I fought hard for President Trump. Nobody wanted him to win more than I did,” Lee Chatfield, Republican Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, said in a statement. “But I also love our republic. I can’t imagine risking our norms, traditions, and institutions to pass a resolution that retroactively changes Trump’s constituents.”
READ: Trump lashes out at Supreme Court and Barr as efforts to roll back elections fail
THREATS OF VIOLENCE
In Arizona, at the start of the constituency meeting there, the state’s Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, said that Trump’s fraud allegations “had led to threats of violence against me, my office and those in this office today sala, “echoing the same reports of threats and intimidation in other states.
“While there will be those who will be upset that their candidate did not win, it is patently anti-American and unacceptable that today’s event is anything less than an honored tradition celebrated with pride and celebration,” Hobbs said.
A group of Trump supporters called on Facebook for protests throughout the day Monday in Lansing, Michigan, in front of the state Capitol, which was closed to the public as a security measure.
READ: Joe Biden & Kamala Harris Named Time’s ‘Person of the Year’
But by early afternoon, only a few had gathered, including 66-year-old Bob Ray, a retired construction worker. He held a sign that read, “Order a Forensic Audit,” “Save America,” and “Stop Communism.”
Voters received a police escort to and from the building. One female constituent, Marseille Allen, told MSNBC that she was wearing a bulletproof vest at the urging of family and friends.
A small group of Republicans who claimed to be constituents of his party tried to gain access to the Capitol building as the process began, but were denied entry by police.
They asked that a whiteboard be given to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, but the officer at the gate told them that he would not turn over the paperwork and that they should contact officials independently.
Trump said late last month that he would leave the White House if the Electoral College voted for Biden, but has since shown little interest in budging. On Monday, he repeated a series of unsubstantiated claims.
“Swinging states that have encountered MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD, which is all of them, CANNOT LEGALLY CERTIFY these votes as complete and correct without committing a severely punishable offense,” he wrote on Twitter.
Trump’s only tactic left is to convince Congress to reject the results in January.
Under federal law, any member of Congress can object to a vote count for a particular state during the January 6 session. Each house of Congress must then debate the challenge before voting by a simple majority on whether to support it.
The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is sure to reject any challenge, while senior Senate Republicans in the Senate on Monday rejected the idea of overriding the result.
