Joe Biden delivers a Thanksgiving address at the Queen Theatre in
Wilmington, Delaware, on November 25, 2020. CHANDAN KHANNA /
AFP
Joe Biden’s US election victory was set for formal
confirmation Monday by the Electoral College, further closing the
door on angry efforts by President Donald Trump to overturn the
2020 vote.
Electors were meeting across all 50 states, often under extra
security amid tensions driven by Trump’s unprecedented refusal to
concede.
About halfway through the process, due to finish late Monday,
Biden was on course to rack up an expected 306 Electoral College
votes against 232 for Trump. As soon as he crosses the half-way
mark, hitting 270, his win will already be secured.
“I hope you can see me smiling behind this mask,” said
Democrat Nancy Patton Mills, as she presided over the vote, held
with full Covid-19 precautions, in Pennsylvania.
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Most electoral voters are unknown to the wider public, but
national personalities occasionally take part — with Trump’s 2016
rival Hillary Clinton voting Monday in New York.
“I believe we should abolish the Electoral College,” Clinton
tweeted. “But while it still exists, I was proud to cast my vote in
New York for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris stand with spouses Jill
Biden and Doug Emhoff after delivering remarks in Wilmington,
Delaware, on November 7, 2020, after being declared the winners of
the presidential election. Jim WATSON / AFP
The Electoral College is a tradition that has long been
considered mostly a formality for confirming the will of the people
expressed at the polls.
This year, the somewhat arcane procedure is at the center of an
ugly — and many warn dangerous — challenge led by Trump against the
credibility of US democracy.
Soundly beaten by Biden on November 3, Trump continues to claim,
without evidence, that he was the real winner.
Court after court has turned down the Republican team’s claims
of election fraud around the country and last Friday the Supreme
Court dealt a final legal blow when it threw out an appeal lodged
by Trump allies from Texas and other Republican-led states.
Yet another challenge, seeking to get Biden’s narrow win in
Wisconsin tossed out, was rejected Monday by the state’s top
court.
Formal confirmation in the Electoral College will draw a further
line under the election, which saw Biden make Trump a rare one-term
president after campaigning on a message of vanquishing the
Covid-19 pandemic, healing political division and restoring
traditional US diplomacy.
The Democrat, who has largely avoided responding to Trump’s
conspiracy theories, announced he would deliver an address in the
evening dedicated to “the strength and resilience” of US
democracy.
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– Disinformation – Until now, a majority of
Republicans in Congress have either backed Trump’s claims or at
least turned a blind eye, with many refusing to call Biden the
president-elect.
Disinformation spearheaded by the president and spread by
popular commentators on Fox News and new conspiracy
theory-mongering outlets like Newsmax means that many Americans
have all but given up faith in their own institutions.
Polls show that as few as one in four Republican voters accept
the election results.
Thousands of Trump supporters, including members of far-right
groups, protested in Washington at the weekend, brawling with
counter-protesters.
The threat of violence led to extraordinary security measures
for the Electoral College meetings in several states.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer — herself the target this
year of death threats and a paramilitary kidnapping plot — ordered
the vote to take place in a closed building due to “security
issues.” Footage in Georgia over the weekend showed a group of
armed activists in camouflage parading at the state Capitol to
support Trump’s claims.
Trump holds up his fist as he leaves the stage at the end of a
rally to support Republican Senate candidates at Valdosta Regional
Airport in Valdosta, Georgia on December 5, 2020. (Photo by ANDREW
CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP).
The White House showed no sign of relenting.
Stephen Miller, a senior Trump advisor, told Fox News on Monday
that an “alternate slate of electors” had been created to send its
own results to Congress, with Biden declared the loser.
And Trump maintained his stream of threats and unsubstantiated
claims on Twitter, citing “massive VOTER FRAUD” and declaring that
certifying election results would be “a severely punishable
crime.”
The legal Electoral College vote, however, will leave the Trump
train almost no place left to go.
Only one big formality remains before Biden’s inauguration on
January 20, when Congress, presided over by Vice President Mike
Pence, opens up and counts the electoral votes on January 6.
Pennsylvania’s state attorney general Josh Shapiro, who is also
an elector, called Monday’s procedure an “exclamation point,
clearly demonstrating — yet again — that Joe Biden will be the next
president of the United States.”
In the latest sign of a shifting tide, the staunchly
Trump-supporting editorial board of The Wall Street Journal told
Trump Monday that his time is up.
“President Trump’s legal challenges have run their course, and
he and the rest of the Republican Party can help the country and
themselves by acknowledging the result and moving on,” it said.
AFP
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