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THE END? Electoral College Set To Meet Monday To Vote On Presidential Election

Biden now leads in electoral votes, 302-226

   DailyWire.com
Wood blocks in blue with 270 on them to represent the number of Electoral College votes needed to win the US presidential election
Cathy Scola/Getty Images

Is today the day?

When the presidential election took place 40 days ago, President Donald Trump at first appeared headed toward re-election. But as the night turned into morning, Democrat Joe Biden pulled ahead. Then in the days and weeks that followed, which included numerous lawsuits from Team Trump and recounts in battleground states that didn’t alter the tallies by much, Biden was deemed the winner by major news agencies.

Now, the Electoral College is set to hold its quadrennial vote, with electors in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., casting their votes for the candidates who won there. Throughout the day Monday, the electors will meet in their home states to vote, then send their results to Washington, where they will be tallied in a Jan. 6 joint session of Congress presided over by Vice President Mike Pence.

The voting will begin at 10 a.m. EST and is set to be carried live on several cable news networks as well as C-SPAN. As the count stands right now, Biden leads Trump in electoral votes, 306-232. The winner needs 270 votes.

Why today? “The electors by law meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, providing enough time to resolve any disputes about the Nov. 3 election,” the New York Post reported.

“Each of the 538 electors casts a vote for president and one for vice president. Those votes are counted and certified and combined with the governor’s vote totals. All 50 states have certified their votes. Copies are then sent to the US Senate, the state’s secretary of state, and the National Archives and Records Administration,” the Post said.

Biden last week announced he would address the nation Monday night, after the Electoral College has voted. Trump, meanwhile, has yet to accept reports that he lost, saying on Fox News that “I worry about the country having an illegitimate president, that’s what I worry about. A president that lost and lost badly.”

Trump’s lawyers have lost dozens of lawsuits appealing to courts to reopen the count in battleground states. Trump and Republican allies also sought to persuade the Supreme Court to set aside 62 electoral votes for Biden in four states, but the justices on Friday refused to take up the case.

Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws that mandate electors vote for the winner of the popular vote. But in elections past, some electors have been “faithless,” meaning that they voted for the losing candidate. Just 14 of those states have an enforcement mechanism to replace a faithless elector and his or her deviant vote, Ballotpedia reported.

Each state gets the same number of electors as the total number of seats they hold in Congress, which means two senators plus the number of representatives in the House. So, California gets 57 electoral votes, while Florida gets 29 and both Alaska and Delaware get just three. Washington, D.C., gets three votes under a constitutional amendment ratified in 1961. While most states award only a single candidate, Maine and Nebraska can split up their votes within congressional districts.

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