Biden Officially Wins Key Battleground States as Electors Meet
Members of the Electoral College began meeting in their states on Monday to officially elect Joe Biden.
(Bloomberg) -- Electoral College members from the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona cast their official votes for Democrat Joe Biden on Monday, a moment some Republican lawmakers have said should mark the end of President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results.
Electors cast their votes for Biden and running mate Kamala Harris in a constitutionally mandated procedure occurring in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The final battleground state to cast its Electoral College slate is Michigan, coming later Monday.
The ceremonies usually pass with little notice, but this year, they may help conclude a chaotic election season punctuated by Trump’s refusal to concede and he and his allies’ frequent insistence, without evidence, that the vote was “rigged” against him.
Many prominent Republicans joined the president in declining to recognize Biden’s victory last month, saying Trump had a right to pursue legal challenges. That process will have played out once Biden reaches a majority of electoral ballots with 270. Congress will then officially count the Electoral College votes and declare the winner on Jan. 6.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, told reporters last week that the election will be “over” once the Electoral College votes.
“The Electoral College obviously brings some finality to this,” Thune said. And Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, said when asked whether the president should concede, “I’ll talk to you December the 14th.”
Retiring Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the election should be over after Monday’s vote, and that he hopes Trump then “puts the country first” and congratulates Biden. But asked on “Fox News Sunday” whether he’ll stop contesting the election after Monday, Representative Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip, wouldn’t say, and insisted “let the legal process play out.”
Electors, who are generally selected by their political parties, are committed to vote for the winner of the popular vote in each state. Biden won 306 electoral votes from 25 states and the District of Columbia. Trump captured 232 electoral votes from the 25 states he won.
Most electors are meeting in their state capitals with restricted access and social distancing because of the coronavirus pandemic. Nevada conducted its meeting entirely by video conference and Arizona didn’t publicly disclose the location of its gathering to keep it “low key.”
Even though the outcome has been decided and more than 50 post-election lawsuits challenging the results by Trump’s campaign and its allies were rejected, the president and some of his supporters continue to say he won based on groundless claims of widespread fraud.
On Monday, Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer tweeted that Republican electors in the state also met at the state capitol to cast votes for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence because a Trump campaign lawsuit contesting the state’s results is still pending. Former U.S. Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania said the Trump electors in the commonwealth also held “conditional” votes in case a court were to overturn the results.
The idea is to send a rival slate of electors for Congress to consider. But there’s only one certified slate of electors that Congress can recognize from a state, and their move is “not going to work as a matter of law,” said Edward Foley, a professor and director of an election-law program at Ohio State University, who has studied disputed elections.
Trump said he’ll continue with legal challenges even after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected the bid by Texas to nullify the election results in four pivotal states -- a case the president had called “the big one.” But he acknowledged that time is running out.
“We’re going to speed it up as much as we can, but you can only go so fast. They give us very little time,” Trump said on Fox News on Sunday. He added that he was “disappointed” in the U.S. Supreme Court, three of whose nine justices he appointed, for not having the “courage” to overturn the election.
The president has pressured Republicans in Congress and at the state level to help him overturn the election, including by urging state GOP legislative leaders to ignore the popular vote and appoint rival Trump electors. They’ve declined.
Rick Bloomingdale, a Biden elector in Pennsylvania, said he’s confident his vote will be counted and that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election will fail.
“At noon on January 20, Joe Biden’s going to be president of the United States,” said Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. “It’s mind-boggling to me that we have people that are actually trying conduct a coup and take the votes away from the voters.”
There were protests against Trump’s election outside Electoral College meetings in some states in 2016, and there could be this year as well. Trump supporters gathered to protest in Washington on Saturday, at times clashing with counter-protesters and police.
Following armed protests in Michigan and a foiled kidnapping plot against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, police were to escort the state’s 16 electors for Biden to the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, said elector Chris Cracchiolo, vice chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party.
“At the time I volunteered to do this, I thought it was somewhat ceremonial,” Cracchiolo said. “Since Nov. 3, the magnitude and importance of this role seems to magnify every day.”
The Michigan legislature is closed and working remotely on Monday due to safety concerns, Democratic state Representative Darrin Camilleri tweeted Sunday.
The legislature stripped Republican Michigan state Representative Gary Eisen of his committee posts Monday after the lawmaker said he was going to be part of a potentially violent protest seeking to overturn the state’s Electoral College vote.
Biden elector and Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said Georgia could see further attempts to flip the vote even as the Electoral College meets, “given what we have already seen here. At this point, nobody would be surprised at anything.”
When U.S. voters mark ballots in a presidential race every four years, they’re technically voting for a candidate’s slate of electors, who cast that state’s number of electoral votes -- one for each U.S. representative and senator. The candidate who gets a majority of electoral votes, 270, wins the presidency.
Beyond Monday, the next step is for Congress to tally the electoral votes from each state in a joint session on Jan. 6 with Vice President Mike Pence presiding. There could be drama if at least one member of both the House and the Senate objects to a state’s slate of electors or votes; it would require each chamber to debate and vote on the objection.
Republican Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama has said he plans to make an objection, but so far no senator has committed to joining him. Seventy-five Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania also sent a letter to the state’s congressional delegation this month urging them to object.
Prior Objections
There were objections raised in the House in 2000 and 2016 that failed for lack of a participating senator. An objection in 2004 to the Ohio results by former Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California and former Democratic U.S. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio delayed the counting of electoral votes until it was debated and voted down.
Any objection that reached a vote is likely to fail, with Democrats holding a majority in the House and enough Republican senators having acknowledged Biden’s victory, said Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford University law professor and election-law expert.
Realistically, then, Monday’s meeting of electors is the last step for anyone else waiting for the presidential election process to play out, Persily said.
“Constitutionally, that would be end of the road,” he said.
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