Electoral College preparing to certify Biden’s win

By Alfonso Fernandez

Washington, Dec 13 (efe-epa).- More than a month after the Nov. 3 presidential election, the Electoral College is preparing on Monday to certify the victory of Democrat Joe Biden after the Supreme Court rejected the suits filed by Republican President Donald Trump, who still has not acknowledged his defeat.

Trump told Fox News on Sunday that his efforts to overturn the election are “not over” and that he and his team plan to continue moving forward with those plans even though virtually no clear legal avenues remain whereby he could derail Biden’s win.

Shortly after he spoke with the conservative media outlet, en route to his private golf club in Sterling, Virginia, to spend the rest of Sunday, Trump tweeted: “How do states and politicians confirm an election where corruption and irregularities are documented throughout? A Swing State hustle!”

And, in a separate tweet: “MOST CORRUPT ELECTION IN U.S. HISTORY!”

In recent weeks, however, assorted courts in several states around the country have thrown out the complaints presented by the Trump campaign, most of them due to lack of evidence, and have validated Biden’s victory.

The coup de grace to the latest attempt by Trump to overturn the election result came last Friday when the US Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by Texas seeking to throw out the election result.

Thus, on Monday, the Electoral College will meet to formally vote for Biden as the next US president, and he will take office on Jan. 20, 2021.

The former vice president, who served for eight years in that role under Barack Obama (2009-2017), garnered 306 electoral votes in the recent election, handily above the 270 needed to win the presidency, while Trump obtained 232 electoral votes out of the available total of 538.

Although Americans voted at the polls in early November, the result that matters in terms of electing the president is the Electoral College vote, where state electors are apportioned according to their states’ population, including the District of Columbia.

The process of casting their electoral votes for Biden will be performed on Monday by the representatives of the political parties or government officials in each state reflecting the popular vote result in each state on Nov. 3.

Once the vote casting is completed and the official tally recorded, it will be sent to the president of the US Senate, a post which is held by the US vice president – in this case, Mike Pence – and that result will be officially confirmed on Jan. 6.

Then, on Jan. 20, Biden will be inaugurated as the country’s 46th president.

However, Trump continues to hold out on recognizing his defeat, claiming that election “fraud” denied him reelection, a stance that a large portion of his supporters have also adopted, despite the fact that absolutely no evidence for that claim has been presented – that is to say, no evidence that irregularities occurred to the extent that they would have changed the election result.

Nevertheless, the fact that the bogus claim has survived thus far has further exacerbated the tense polarization across the country.

On Saturday night, four people were stabbed in Washington during a confrontation between Trump supporters and members of the Antifa and Black Lives Matter movements.

The clashes came at the end of marches using the slogan “Stop the Steal” (of the election) being held in the US capital by pro-Trump activists.

Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor and one of the speakers at the demonstration, said that the president’s supporters are in a spiritual battle for the “heart and soul” of this country.

Meanwhile, Biden – who is trying to present an image of normality in the face of Trump’s aggressive rhetoric and amid concern over the sharp increase in coronavirus cases throughout the country – has been announcing his nominees for key posts in his incoming administration.

So far, Biden has nominated former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen for treasury secretary, Anthony Blinken for secretary of state and retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin for defense secretary.