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Electoral College affirms Biden victory as Trump continues baseless challenges

  • By Miles Parks/NPR
President-elect Joe Biden, right, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, left, share a laugh during an event to announce several choices for positions in the Biden administration at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Friday, Dec. 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

 Susan Walsh/AP

President-elect Joe Biden, right, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, left, share a laugh during an event to announce several choices for positions in the Biden administration at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Friday, Dec. 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

(Washington) – President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received the needed majority of votes in the Electoral College on Monday in another step putting them closer toward taking the White House in January.

Following a presidential election year like no other in American history, the day included many unprecedented arrangements as electors met in state capitols — some locked down for fear of political violence — in convention centers and online to dole out the nation’s 538 Electoral College votes.

California’s 55 Electoral College votes pushed the ticket over the threshold of 270 needed to win. Congress is set to meet on Jan. 6 to count the votes. Biden and Harris are scheduled to take their oaths of office on Jan. 20.

What’s the Electoral College?

Under the Constitution, American voters in the presidential race support not candidates but electors — usually current and former party officials, state lawmakers and party activists — whose votes later in the process are formally what brings about the result of the election.

Those electors then meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes.

Democrats’ 2016 presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, and former President Bill Clinton, for example, both took part as New York state electors in Albany’s voting on Monday as electors for Biden.

In fact, Hillary Clinton restated her opposition to the Electoral College, which she and other critics call undemocratic, but said that while it still exists and she is a member, she would use her position on it to support Biden.

In recent decades, this process has been mostly ceremonial and received less attention than the main portion of the election. But this year, outgoing President Trump and some of his supporters have drawn out objections to the result based on baseless claims about fraud or irregularities.

Those claims have led many Republicans to feel as though the election was stolen from them and also led to threats against election officials across the nation. For that reason, Michigan held its proceedings Monday in a closed Capitol secured with a heavy police presence.

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