Confirmed: Electoral College Votes Declare Joe Biden the Next POTUS

By
Shawn Ambrose
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There’s nothing much Donald Trump can do now.

When results of the 2020 Presidential Election showed that the incumbent had lost by a significant margin, Trump refused to concede defeat, alleging voter fraud instead.

So, he went state by state, filing lawsuits for non-existent violations hoping to overturn the outcome of the election, but those lawsuits were quickly thrown out of court.

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He finally said he’d leave the White House, but only if the electoral college voted for Joe Biden.

Well, Trump should start packing his bags.

Confirmed: Electoral College Votes Declare Joe Biden the Next POTUS

In a twist that everyone except Donald Trump saw coming, Joe Biden has been confirmed the next President of the United States after winning the Electoral College with 302 votes to Trump’s 232.

And based on the certified results from the states, Biden is on track to win 306 Electoral College votes.

The race was effectively over on Tuesday at 6.30am (Singapore time), as Biden had reached the magical number of 270 votes, which is the majority in the Electoral College required to win the Presidency.

The next step in this long, long process is to officially count the votes in a joint session in Congress and certify Biden as the President-elect.

But wait, wasn’t this decided long ago?

Could the Electoral College really have changed the outcome?

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How the Electoral College Works

To answer that question, we have to understand how the Electoral College works.

The US election process would be much simpler if the winner was chosen based on a majority vote, but as you’d know if you’ve recently purchased air tickets to Hong Kong, life’s not that simple.

In the United States, when Americans vote, they’re not voting for their president.

Instead, they’re voting for who their state votes for.

These group of electors are called the Electoral College.

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Each state has a number of electoral votes, roughly equivalent to their population size.

Since there are a total of 538 electors, a presidential candidate needs that magical 270 electoral votes we mentioned earlier to win, because that gives him the majority.

Back when the US constitution was written, the Founding Fathers were wary of letting “the people” have too much representation, as they believed citizens weren’t adequately informed.

Electors usually vote for the candidate who received the most votes in that state, but this isn’t always the case.

Faithless Electors; Trump’s Last Hope

Electors who vote against the choice of the people in their state are called “faithless electors”.

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The 2016 presidential election saw an unusually high number of faithless electors as ten electors were disloyal or tried to be.

But of course, 10 out of 538 isn’t a lot and that’s already considered “unusually high”.

Trump’s plan, if his legal challenges failed, was to convince faithless electors to vote against the wishes of the people in their state, so he could win.

But this was always going to be a pie in the sky.

Firstly, many states have passed laws that require their electors to vote as pledged.

Secondly, as Trump enjoys saying about his victory over Hilary Clinton in 2016, Trump lost this election to Biden by a lot. 

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This means that an unprecedented number of electors would have had to be disloyal for Trump to win, which was highly unlikely.

And, just as the entire world predicted, Biden has indeed won the Electoral College, and Trump’s plan to overturn the results looks like it has failed.

Now that Biden has been declared the winner, it’ll be interesting to see if Trump really will leave the White House, or whether he’ll continue to shout “fake news!” at the wall like a malfunctioning robot until someone takes him away.

Featured Image: Matt Smith Photographer / Shutterstock.com

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Shawn Ambrose
Email: [email protected]