At the first presidential debate on September 29, moderator Chris Wallace asked former Vice President Joe Biden if he would wait until the election results were independently certified before he declared victory. Biden answered simply, “yes.” But that’s not what Biden has done.
The exchange from October 29 went like this:
WALLACE: Vice President Biden, final question for you. Will you urge your supporters to stay calm while the vote is counted? And will you pledge not to declare victory until the election is independently certified?
BIDEN: Yes. And here’s the deal. We count the ballots, as you pointed out. Some of these ballots in some states can’t even be opened until election day. And if there’s thousands of ballots, it’s going to take time to do it. And by the way, our military… They’ve been voting by ballots since the end of the Civil War, in effect. And that’s what’s going to happen. Why is it, for them, somehow not fraudulent. It’s the same process. It’s honest. No one has established at all that there is fraud related to mail-in ballots, that somehow it’s a fraudulent process.
Instead, Biden has declared victory before the results have been independently certified, buttressed by proclamations from the media that he is the victor. Whether after all the legal challenges by the Trump administration and others prove that the results of the election should be regarded as legitimate or not, the fact remains that Biden pledged to wait, and he has not done so.
On Saturday, Biden declared victory in Wilmington, Delaware. He asserted:
Folks, the people of this nation have spoken. They’ve delivered us a clear victory, a convincing victory, a victory for we the people. We’ve won with the most votes ever cast for a presidential ticket in the history of the nation, 74 million.Well, I must admit it surprised me. Tonight, we’ve seen all over this nation, all cities in all parts of the country, indeed across the world, an outpouring of joy, of hope, renewed faith, and tomorrow bring a better day. I’m humbled by the trust and confidence you’ve placed in me.
I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify, who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States, and work with all my heart, with the confidence of the whole people, to win the confidence of all of you. For that is what America, I believe, is about. It’s about people. And that’s what our administration will be all about.
But the Electoral College has not voted, and despite the proclamations of the media declaring the election has been decided, the recounts and the legal challenges to the election have not yet played out. For the results to be independently certified, the General Services Administration must declare a winner; they have not done so as yet.
“The only time in recent history the GSA did not quickly identify a winner was in the aftermath of the tight 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore,” The Wall Street Journal reported. The GSA issued a statement: “The GSA Administrator does not pick the winner in the Presidential election. The GSA Administrator ascertains the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.”