Electors gathered in 50 states and the District of Columbia on Monday to formally affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 election. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
FINAL TALLY OF ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES:
Democrat Joe Biden: 306
Republican Donald Trump: 232
President-elect Joe Biden says local election officials and workers endured threats of violence and verbal abuse while ensuring that democracy prevailed in the November election.
In a speech Monday after the Electoral College affirmed his victory, Biden said that the threats were “simply unconscionable” but that the workers showed courage and commitment to free and fair elections in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
He said President Donald Trump’s lawyers brought “dozens and dozens and dozens” of legal challenges of the election results, but each time they were found to be without merit.
Biden says Trump’s team repeatedly made arguments to state legislatures, officials and even the U.S. Supreme Court, “and in every case no cause or evidence was found to reverse or question or dispute the results.”
President-elect Joe Biden says his Electoral College victory of the same magnitude as President Donald Trump’s in 2016 is a signal that the current president should finally accept his own defeat in this year’s election.
Biden noted during a speech Monday in Wilmington, Delaware, that Trump called his 2016 tally of 306 electoral votes a “landslide.”
Biden says if that constituted a clear victory then, he wanted to “respectfully suggest” that Trump now accept Biden’s victory this year.
Trump has refused to concede defeat in the presidential vote, making repeated and unfounded allegations of widespread fraud.