The Electoral College made the 2020 presidential election official Monday, ending hope that the Trump campaign could overturn the results of the November 3 election, with electors in every state casting votes as expected and giving Joe Biden and Kamala Harris victory, The New York Times reports.
The final vote count was 306 for Mr Biden and 232 for President Donald Trump. The voting was carried out in almost every case in each state Capitol, although in some cases, the locations were kept secret in order to protect the security of the electors.
Gov Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of the very Democratic state of Maryland, called the voting of the Electoral College across the nation a “civics lesson.”
“The peaceful transition of power that we formally take part in here today is a hallmark of our democracy that has been handed down for more than 220 years,” the Times quoted him as saying before Maryand’s 10 electors cast their ballots in Annapolis. “It is a reminder that despite our differences, we are united as Americans who honor the will of the people.”
Hogan at Electoral College (Patrick Siebert/Maryland GovPics via Flickr Creative Commons)In a speech Monday evening, after the voting, President-elect Biden told Americans it was “time to turn the page” and move past the election. He characterized the record voter turnout in the election as “one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty that we’ve ever seen.” We should celebrate it, he said, not attack it, a clear reference to legal efforts by Mr Trump to overturn the results.
Those attacks, Mr Biden said, were “unconscionable.” Still, Mr Biden asserted that Mr Trump had been given every chance to have his day in court. All of those chances have failed.
Coughing frequently during his speech, Mr Biden later said that he had tested negative for Covid-19 and that the coughing was due to a cold.
