WASHINGTON – The Electoral College will vote Monday to confirm the victory of President-elect Joe Biden over President Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election.
Ballots are cast throughout the day by individual voters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and they reflect the popular vote in their state.
By 12 noon, Indiana, Tennessee, Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina and Oklahoma had all voted for Trump, bringing the total number of presidential votes so far to 56.
Vermont, Illinois, Nevada, Delaware and New Hampshire all voted for Biden, for a total of 36 election votes in the afternoon. Biden is expected to get a total of 306 votes, while Trump is expected to get 232 votes.
Voters in several major swing states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, will gather ET at 12 noon to cast their ballots, all of which are expected to go to Biden. The former vice president is not expected to formally get the majority of the 270 votes needed to win, however, when California records his 55 election votes.
Election college ballots are usually a formality that occurs more than a month after election day vote registration. But Trump’s unprecedented legal and legislative efforts to overturn this year’s election results have placed more emphasis on action.
The president, his campaign and his political allies have filed dozens of lawsuits since election day, asking federal and state courts to overturn election results based on numerous unsubstantiated allegations of malpractice.
These attempts failed repeatedly, prompting the president to change tactics in early December and personally put pressure on Republican state legislators to intervene in the selection of individual voters. So far, this too has failed.
Nevertheless, Trump continues to lie that he was the legitimate winner, not Biden, in the November election and that he fell victim to a massive, unified nationwide conspiracy to convert votes in favor of Biden.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress fear that their Trump-loving constituencies will be angered, often falling behind the president and refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory.
Once voters have formally registered to vote for the president and vice president, the next major event of the election college process will be the joint sitting of Congress on January 6, during which both chambers will officially count the election votes.
Vice President Mike Pence is expected to assume his formal role as chairman of the Senate on Jan. 6, including announcing the results of a job.
Any objection to the election vote must be submitted in writing to Congress and signed by at least one member of the House and one senator. If an objection arises, the two chambers consider the objection separately.
Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks has already said he will challenge the results of the Electoral College number in the House. In the Senate, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson did not refuse to file a similar objection.
But not all Republicans agreed with Brooks’ plan to stifle election numbers in an attempt to challenge the results that were confirmed to have failed. Many Republican senators, who have not yet publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory, have indicated that they will accept the results of Monday’s vote in the Electoral College as the final verdict for the 2020 presidential election.
Still, the denial of Biden’s victory by some Republicans in Congress will last January and beyond.
In a Washington Post poll of all 249 congressional Republicans released on Dec. 6, only 27 said Pitton had been legally elected president. A further 220 GOP legislators gave vague answers or did not respond, and two more, Brooks of Arizona and Rep. Paul A. Kosher said he believes Trump is the right winner in the election.
Since election day, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have largely sought to be on the field of Trump’s increasingly distrustful campaign to overturn the results.
While a small group of Biden campaign lawyers are monitoring Trump’s cases, the former vice president is charging before a formal transition process, announcing his candidates in his incoming cabinet and making plans to actively fight the corona virus infection in his first 100 days. .
Biden and Harris are set to take over as President and Vice President of the United States on January 20, the day of the inauguration.
This is a growing story, check back for updates.