Joe Biden captures electoral votes in states Trump contested

Washington, December 14 (RHC)-- In the U.S., Electoral College members in all six battleground states where President Donald Trump most fiercely contested the results cast their ballots for Democrat Joe Biden on Monday, effectively cutting off the president’s path to overturning the election.

The vote marks the watershed moment some Republican lawmakers have said would signal the end of their support for attempts to overturn the November 3rd election.

The 16 electors in Michigan voted for Biden, following the 63 votes cast for him earlier in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  Biden will have enough electoral votes to be officially declared president-elect when members have cast 270 ballots, which is expected after California votes. Congress will officially count the votes on January 6th.

Electors in 50 U.S. states and District of Columbia are voting for president and vice president in time-honored constitutional ceremonies that have drawn new attention this year after Trump refused to concede and insisted without evidence that the election was “rigged.”

Many Republicans have refused to recognize Biden’s victory, indulging Trump’s baseless claims about a stolen election and saying he had a right to pursue legal challenges and to let the process play out.  And now, observers say, with electors casting their votes, it has.

“The Electoral College obviously brings some finality to this,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, told reporters last week.  And South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, another Trump ally, said when asked whether the president should concede, “I’ll talk to you December the 14th.”

Trump said on Fox News on Sunday that he’ll continue to fight the results, even after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Texas to nullify the election results in four of the six battleground states -- a case the president had called “the big one” that was supported by Republican attorneys general in 18 states and 126 Republican members of Congress.

Republicans said Trump electors who weren’t certified met in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to cast votes in case pending litigation overturned the results.  But any attempt to get Congress to consider a rival slate of electors is “not going to work as a matter of law,” said Edward Foley, a professor and director of an election-law program at Ohio State University who has studied disputed elections.