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December 15, 2020

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Electors meet to formally choose Biden

Source: AP | 00:00 UTC+8 December 15, 2020 | Print Edition

PRESIDENTIAL electors were meeting across the United States yesterday to formally choose Joe Biden as the nation’s next president.

Monday is the day set by law for the meeting of the Electoral College. In reality, electors meet in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to cast their ballots. The results will be sent to Washington and tallied in a January 6 joint session of Congress over which Vice President Mike Pence will preside.

The electors’ votes have drawn more attention than usual this year because President Donald Trump has refused to concede the election and continued to make unfounded allegations of fraud.

Biden was planning to address the nation after the electors have voted. Trump, meanwhile, is clinging to his claims that he won the election, but also undermining Biden’s presidency even before it begins.

“No, I worry about the country having an illegitimate president, that’s what I worry about. A president that lost and lost badly,” Trump told Fox News in an interview that was taped on Saturday.

Following weeks of Republican legal challenges that were dismissed by judges, Trump and Republican allies tried to persuade the Supreme Court last week to set aside 62 electoral votes for Biden in four states, which might have thrown the outcome into doubt. The justices rejected the effort on Friday.

Biden won 306 electoral votes to 232 votes for Trump. It takes 270 votes to be elected.

In 32 states and the District of Columbia, laws require electors to vote for the popular-vote winner. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld this arrangement in July.

Electors almost always vote for the state winner anyway because they generally are devoted to their political party. There’s no reason to expect any defections this year.

The voting is decidedly low tech, by paper ballot. Electors cast one vote each for president and vice president.

The Electoral College was the product of compromise during the drafting of the Constitution between those who favored electing the president by popular vote and those who opposed giving the people the power to choose their leader.

The bargain has produced five elections in which the president did not win the popular vote.

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