Joe Biden officially secured enough electoral college votes on Monday to claim victory, despite President Trump’s ongoing refusal to concede in light of wide-ranging claims of election fraud.
Biden’s win was secured after California’s 55 electors put the former Vice President over the 270 mark needed to win.
Joe Biden will address the nation at 7:30 p.m. ET following today’s Electoral College voting, in which he captured electors in all six battleground states in which President Trump and his supporters contested the November election.
“The 16 electors in Michigan voted for Biden, following the 63 votes cast for him earlier in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Congress will officially count the votes on Jan. 6.”
The votes come as Trump and his allies continue to contest the results, which Trump attorneys and supporters have suggested are fair game until January 6th.
On Monday, Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer tweeted that Republican electors in the state also met at the state capitol to cast votes for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence because a Trump campaign lawsuit contesting the state’s results is still pending.
Former U.S. Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania said the Trump electors in the commonwealth also held “conditional” votes in case a court were to overturn the results.
The idea is to send a rival slate of electors for Congress to consider. But there’s only one certified slate of electors that Congress can recognize from a state, and their move is “not going to work as a matter of law,” said Edward Foley, a professor and director of an election-law program at Ohio State University who has studied disputed elections.
Biden received 306 electoral votes from the 25 states and the District of Columbia, while Trump captured 232 electoral votes from the 25 states he won.