Has the Electoral College confirmed Biden's victory in the US election?
Monday 14 December was the end of the road for the Trump circus of flailing, haphazard attempts to overturn the results of the presidential election 2020.
It’s been an extraordinary and at time unbelievable post-election month, which saw the defeated president Trump throw everything that he could at some 50 individual court cases alleging widespread voter fraud, some with laughable errors and even an admission by Rudy Giuliani in court that there was no allegation of election fraud at all.
Yesterday was the end of it all, though you wouldn’t think it to check Donald Trump’s Twitter account, where he is still spouting futile and false claims of fraud.
Now even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell - a staunch loyalist to Trump who privately accepted Trump’s defeat but publicly until now has refused to acknowledge the reality - has today at last admitted that Trump has indeed been well and truly defeated. Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday McConnell noted that,
“The Electoral College has spoken," adding, "so today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
Trump voter fraud lawsuits: fail, fail and fail again
Throughout the month of November and into early December, states worked round the clock to complete recounts and audits, as well as certifying their election results. At every turn Trump and his Republican allies tried to overturn the results of the election using legal and political pressure, including an extraordinary effort in Texas where a group of 126 members of Congress and 17 state attorneys general backed a baseless lawsuit seeking to reverse the results of the election in other states. The Supreme Court unanimously denied the case, stating,
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”
Electoral College confirms historic win for Biden - Harris
The Electoral College members for each state met yesterday to cast their votes for the 46th president of the United States. The first to cast votes was New Hampshire at 10am, when all four votes were cast to Joe Biden. Throughout the day states continued following regular protocol, casting their votes faithfully guided by the popular vote within their states, avoiding the eventuality of a “contingent election”.
By the end of the day Biden had secured all 306 Electoral College votes as predicted, securing well above the necessary 270 and Trump secured his 232 votes. There were no faithless electors, when an electoral college member rejects the popular vote and casts theirs instead for another candidate.
Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris secured a 7 million vote lead in the popular vote, with a record-breaking 81 million votes in their favour. They also flipped Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, all of which Trump won over Hillary Clinton in 2016’s presidential race.
Biden speech bashes GOP legal battles
Joe Biden declared Monday in Delaware, just hours after the Electoral College made his victory official, that "the rule of law, our Constitution and the will of the people prevailed" over Trump's efforts to reverse the decisive results of the election.
"The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power, can extinguish that flame," Biden said.
He went on to detail the numerous failures of Trump's campaign in courts from Pennsylvania to Texas, and recounts that have not substantially changed vote tallies. He called efforts by Trump and his supporters to use the courts to overturn the election result "so extreme we've never seen it before." Adding, "thankfully, a unanimous Supreme Court immediately and completely rejected this effort," Biden said.
With reference to the last-ditch attempt in Texas to change the results of other states’ votes, Biden came down hard on the over 130 Republican loyalists who mounted the case to SCOTUS. "This legal manoeuvre was an effort by elected officials and one group of states to try to get the Supreme Court to wipe out the votes of more than 20 million Americans in other states and to hand the presidency to a candidate who lost the Electoral College, lost the popular vote and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they were trying to reverse. It's a position so extreme, we've never seen it before," he said, adding that it was "a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused respect the rule of law and refused to honour our Constitution."
Biden: peace and unity in the face of a turbulent era in US
"In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed," Biden said in Delaware, Monday. "We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And so, now it is time to turn the page. To unite. To heal."
Biden also highlighted his focus for the early days of his administration, underlining his drive to defeat the coronavirus pandemic, handle a successful vaccination campaign and rescue the tanking jobs market.