Joe Biden will take over the US presidency on January 20
Credit: Mark Makela
/Getty Images North America
America’s electors ignored political pressure and security concerns to cast their votes for the next US president on Monday, with Joe Biden expected to be formally nominated.
The largely ceremonial process usually draws little attention, but given Donald Trump’s refusal to admit defeat, it was closely watched as it played out across the country.
Monday saw each of the so-called electors, 538 nominated individuals who under the idiosyncrasies of the US electoral system are the ones who select the president, gather in their states to vote.
They are by either law or precedent bound to select the candidate who received most votes in their state. It is part of the electoral college system laid out in the US Constitution.
While the voting was procedural it was also historic, the moment the country was due to formally pick Mr Biden, the Democratic candidate, as its next president.
The US Congress will then meet on January 6 to count the electoral votes and declare the winner, with Mr Biden due to take over the presidency at the inauguration on January 20.
Mr Trump was in the White House’s Oval Office around lunchtime yesterday as votes were taking place. He has still not made a public sign that he is ready to concede to Mr Biden.
Over the weekend the US president was defiant in a Fox News interview, declaring “it’s not over” despite the Supreme Court rejecting a lawsuit pushing his claims of voter fraud on Friday.
On Monday morning, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the US president, attempted to downplay the significance of the electors voting as he echoed Mr Trump’s claims he could yet somehow cling to the presidency.
“The only date in the Constitution is January 20th. So we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election,” Mr Miller said on Fox News.
Attempts to overturn Mr Biden’s victory by the Trump campaign and its supporters, either through legal challenges or via pressure on state-level Republicans, have been rebuffed.
Mr Biden, who won the close presidential election on November 3 by a margin of multiple states, was scheduled to give a speech last night once all electoral votes had been cast.
With Mr Trump continuing to claim without evidence that the election had been “stolen” from him by mass voter fraud, heightened security was put in place for electors.
In some key swing states officers met electors at their cars or in hotel rooms and escorted them to the locations where they would be voting.
In Michigan’s Capitol building, the Senate and House offices had been closed because of “credible threats of violence". In Arizona, officials would not even make public the location of voting.
One elector for Mr Biden in Pennsylvania had told Politico they received "unrelenting" online harassment before the vote. Another in Michigan said they expected some form of confrontation.
Throughout Monday morning and early afternoon, however, there were few reports of disturbances as electors gathered, often in ornate rooms in their state governmental buildings, to cast their votes.
Some electors — a role often seen as an honour, fulfilling a little known but critical part of the election process — were well-known names. Bill and Hillary Clinton, the former US president and US secretary of state, were electors in New York.
In Georgia, Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate credited with boosting African-American turnout which helped Mr Biden claim the state, presided over the electors to confirm his win there.
In a separate development, Smartmatic, a Florida-based company which runs electronic voting systems, demanded conservative cable news channels retract claims that its machines had flipped votes.
Legal notices and restriction letters to Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network said there was “no evidence” for claims Smartmatic had been involved in any wrongdoing.
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