Electors representing all 50 states gathered in their state capitals Monday to choose the next president of the United States.
The outcome was not in doubt: Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, 306-232.
But it underscored the fact that Election Day, Nov. 3, was just a preliminary step in the 2020 presidential election. Biden wouldn’t officially be president-elect until the Electoral College said so.
In normal times, Electoral College day passes with little notice; the 538 electors do their jobs, follow the will of the voters (with very rare exceptions) and go back home.
But of course these are not normal times — so there was an element of drama to the day, caused mostly by Trump’s stubborn refusal to accept reality and concede.
Electors in five states — New Hampshire and Vermont, where Biden won, and Indiana, Tennessee and Mississippi, which went for Trump — were the first to cast their ballots, and there was no surprise: within minutes, Trump was leading, 28-7.
But it didn’t last. Battleground states fell to Biden like dominoes:
By 5:30 P.M. EST, Biden was out of Trump’s reach, leading 302-232, thanks in large part to California’s 55 electoral votes, the biggest Democratic prize of all. The four electors in Hawaii, which went for Biden on Election Day, later capped his expected margin.
Biden delivered a victory address to the nation on Monday evening.
“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know that nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power, can extinguish that flame,” Biden said.
“The speech represented, to date, Biden’s most forceful defense of the election — and his own legitimacy as president — as well as his most complete denunciation of Trump’s fraudulent claims,” the Washington Post said. “Biden noted that he received 7 million more popular votes, and the same number of electoral votes, 306, as Trump did in 2016 when he claimed ‘a landslide.’”
The electoral ballots will be formally counted at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
In parts of the country, more was taking place than the official Electoral College process.
A group of diehard Trump supporters in Arizona tried to beat the official electors to the punch. They created “a facsimile of the ‘certificate of ascertainment’ that is submitted to formally cast each state’s electoral votes,” reported Arizona Central, in an illicit attempt to change the state’s votes from Biden to Trump.
It didn’t work, and the 11 genuine Arizona electors cast their votes for Biden.
In Michigan, “threats of violence” caused officials in Lansing to shut down all legislative offices in the already-closed state capitol.
A spokesperson for the Michigan Senate majority leader, a Republican, said in an email to the Post that the decision to close legislative offices “was not made because of anticipated protests, but was made based on credible threats of violence.”
“Details about the threats remain unspecified and unconfirmed,” the Post says, noting that “after a year filled with volatile rallies in Lansing and several instances of high-profile political violence, the lawmakers’ public statements about the threats show all sides are on edge….”
In Arizona — like Michigan, a key battleground state in the election — law enforcement officials confirmed that security had been increased at the state capitol in Phoenix.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to make the false claim that the election was a fraud, that he was the winner, and that a re-election victory was stolen from him.
Biden aides say the president-elect is hoping that Trump and his millions of supporters finally realize it’s “long past time to move on,” the Associated Press reports.
Yet most Republicans “have stood by Trump as he’s made unsubstantiated claims of a rigged election, and they show no signs they’ll give Biden the semblance of a honeymoon period,” the AP says.
Trump has already lost dozens of lawsuits challenging the election results at both the state and federal levels and he’s expected to file as many as five more suits this week.
One of those, filed Monday in federal court, challenges the result in firmly Democratic New Mexico, “objecting to the use of drop boxes for voters to return absentee ballots,” a practice Trump has repeatedly denounced in states around the country.
Several prominent Republicans have made it clear they think more litigation is a mistake.
Veteran Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who did not seek re-election, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that after the electors confirm Trump’s defeat, he should “put the country first, take pride in his accomplishments, congratulate Joe Biden and help him off to a good start.”