Our live coverage has ended. Read more about the Electoral College vote here.
In a speech after the Electoral College affirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Trump, he echoed the rights of all Americans “to have your vote counted.”
Biden went on to praise election officials who worked amid a global pandemic to ensure “the integrity of our elections remained intact.”
“One of the extraordinary things we saw this year was that everyday Americans, our friends and our neighbors, often volunteers, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, demonstrating absolute courage, they showed a deep and unwavering faith in and a commitment to the law,” Biden said. “They did their duty in the face of the pandemic. And then they could not and would not give credence to what they knew is not true.”
President-elect Joe Biden on Monday weighed in on the Texas lawsuit that was rejected by the Supreme Court that attempted to block the ballots of millions of voters in battleground states that went in favor of Biden.
The lawsuit, brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is a staunch Trump ally, sought to sue Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin — all states that went for Biden — and invalidate their election results.
The President-elect continued, “Thankfully, a unanimous Supreme Court immediately and completely rejected this effort. The court sent a clear signal to President Trump that they would be no part of an unprecedented assault on our democracy.”
More than a dozen Republican attorneys general sided with Texas, and 126 House Republicans signed on to an amicus brief in support of Paxton’s motion, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
See the moment:
President-elect Joe Biden praised the efforts by local and state official and volunteers who “did their duty in the face of a pandemic” by upholding the election results.
“American democracy works because America makes it work at a local level. One of the extraordinary things we saw this year that was that everyday Americans, our friends and our neighbors, often volunteers, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, demonstrated absolute courage. They showed a deep and unwavering faith in and a commitment to the law,” Biden said.
He noted how officials did not “give credence to what they knew was not true.”
“They knew this election was overseen, was overseen by them. It was honest. It was free and it was fair,” Biden said.
Biden highlighted how many officials faced political pressure, verbal abuse and threats of physical violence.
Watch Biden’s speech:
President-elect Joe Biden, speaking after the Electoral College affirmed his election win, said the “will of the people prevailed” today.
Biden noted that he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received more votes “than any ticket has received in the history of America.”
Watch the moment:
President-elect Joe Biden is delivering remarks to the nation tonight from Wilmington, Delaware, after the Electoral College affirmed his win over President Trump.
Biden is expected to declare it time to “turn the page, to unite, to heal” in his speech tonight, according to excerpts of Biden’s prepared remarks released by his transition team.
Hawaii’s electors cast their four votes for President-elect Joe Biden during their meeting on Monday in Honolulu.
Hawaii was the last state to cast its electoral votes, concluding the arcane process that is laid out in the Constitution. The final Electoral College results are 306 for Biden and 232 for Trump.
There were no “faithless electors” this year, which is when presidential electors vote for someone else other than their state’s popular vote winner. This is a major departure from 2016, which set a record for “faithless electors.” Five Democrats and two Republicans broke ranks and went “faithless” that year.
Biden defeated Trump in Hawaii, about 64% to 34%.
Hawaii is a Democratic stronghold in presidential races. It has voted for a GOP presidential candidate only twice since gaining statehood in 1959 – Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984.
About the process: The meeting of electors marked the next major step in the Electoral College process to affirm the general election results. Electors are required by law to vote for president and vice president on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, which this year is today.
It takes 270 electoral votes of the 538 available to become president.
President-elect Joe Biden will declare it time to “turn the page, to unite, to heal” in a speech tonight after the Electoral College made his victory over President Trump official, according to excerpts of Biden’s prepared remarks released by his transition team.
Biden is set to speak at 7:30 p.m. ET Monday from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
The President-elect intends to lay out the work that will dominate the early days of his administration: the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, including distributing vaccines and slowing its spread as those vaccines become available, and rebuilding an economy battered by the pandemic.
You can read more about his remarks here.
President Trump is not moving in the direction of publicly accepting the election results, despite the Electoral College’s historic meeting to put President-elect Joe Biden over the top, said a source close to the White House, who speaks regularly with the President.
Some White House advisers have noted that Trump has privately acknowledged that he won’t be staying at the White House for a second term, even as he attempts to overturn the election results in court and siphons money from his base off bogus claims of voter fraud.
A separate White House adviser mocked the suggestion made by some Republican officials, including White House domestic policy aide Stephen Miller, that the GOP send “alternate” slates of electors to Congress to be tallied on Jan. 6.
The adviser said people close to Trump continue to see it as highly unlikely that the outgoing President will attend Biden’s inauguration. “He won’t,” the adviser said of the current thinking inside Trump’s circle of allies.
After California clinched the Electoral College victory for President-elect Joe Biden, President Trump tweeted that his Attorney General William Barr will be “leaving” the White House “just before Christmas.”
“Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family…,” the President tweeted.
Trump said Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen would become acting attorney general.
A White House official said Barr was not forced out or fired. “He wasn’t asked to resign,” the official said, insisting there were no fireworks during their meeting this afternoon. “It was a very amicable meeting,” the official said.
The official noted there were frustrations with Barr that may have risen to the level of discussing firing Barr. But the official said this was a very different situation — not like when other secretaries have been fired, the official insisted.
Trump had discussed firing Barr as recently as yesterday, a separate source said, despite how laudatory Barr’s resignation letter is.
Here’s a look at Barr’s letter:
Senate Majority Whip John Thune said that Joe Biden is President-elect once he crosses 270 electoral votes and says efforts to challenge the results in Congress are “not going anywhere.” He said “it’s time for everybody to move on” after today.
Moments ago, Biden won electoral votes to officially clinch the presidency after California’s electors awarded him the state’s 55 electoral votes.
“Now that the electoral college has acted, are you prepared to call Biden President-elect?” CNN asked Thune today.
Here’s how the rest of the exchange went:
Q: You have no doubts?
Thune: “As soon as he crosses the 270 vote threshold, I mean there are still a couple of, I guess, last steps in the process, but in my view that’s how in this country we decide presidential elections, that’s our Constitution, and I believe in following the Constitution.”
Q: Challenge electoral votes?
Thune: “It’s their prerogative, it’s allowed for in the Constitution, but it’s not going anywhere. It’s an opportunity for people to vent and protest, but in the end we have a clear way of determining a president, those steps have been adhered to, they’ve been followed, either the House can choose to do that, (inaudible).”
Monday’s Electoral College vote is not the final step in the constitutional process of selecting a president. The votes cast on Monday are sent to Congress, where they will be counted on Jan. 6 in a joint session led by Vice President Mike Pence.
Many congressional Republicans who have refused thus far to say that Biden won the election have claimed they are waiting for Monday’s Electoral College vote to certify the results. But some of Trump’s staunchest House Republican allies are preparing for a floor fight when the votes are counted in Congress next month.
Lawmakers can dispute a state’s election result when the votes are counted next month. But a challenge can only be considered if both a House member and a senator sign onto it. So far only House Republicans have said they will contest the results, although some GOP senators have suggested they are considering joining.
Even if a senator signs on to challenge the results, it’s only delaying the inevitable. In that case, the House and Senate separately debate the matter for two hours and vote on it. Democrats control the House, and enough GOP senators have already said they reject Trump’s claims of fraud that a challenge would not succeed there either.
After the state electors cast their ballots on Monday, those results will be certified and sent to Congress, the National Archives and to the courts.
On Jan. 20, a new president takes the oath of office at noon.
Read more about the next steps here.
President-elect Joe Biden has received enough electoral votes to officially clinch the presidency, a major milestone that he reached when California’s electors awarded him the state’s 55 electoral votes at their meeting Monday in Sacramento.
CNN projected five weeks ago that Biden would win the White House, but his victory was formalized Monday after presidential electors gathered in statehouses across the country as part of the Constitutional process to officially elect a President.
This development is a crushing blow to President Trump’s controversial and unprecedented attempts to block Biden’s victory in the Electoral College by filing longshot lawsuits and pressuring lawmakers in battleground states to overturn millions of legal votes.
In California, Biden won more than 63% of the statewide vote, while Trump earned about 34%.
Democrats have won California’s electoral votes every cycle since 1992. The state voted for Republicans in the six presidential elections before that.
About the process: The meeting of electors is the next major step in the Electoral College process to affirm the general election results. Electors are required by law to vote for president and vice president on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, which this year is today. It takes 270 electoral votes of the 538 available to become president.
Watch the moment:
Oregon’s electors cast seven electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden during their meeting on Monday in Salem.
Biden won Oregon, a reliably blue state, by about 16 points in 2020.
The meeting of electors is the next major step in the Electoral College process to affirm the general election results. Electors are required by law to vote for president and vice president on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, which this year is today.
It takes 270 electoral votes of the 538 available to become president.
California’s electors vote around 5 p.m. ET, and are expected to put President-elect Joe Biden over the 270 total needed to win the White House.
Earlier today, the battleground states of Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin all sealed election victories for Biden as electors for all 50 states and the District of Columbia met in each state.
Hawaii will be the last state to cast its votes at 7 p.m. ET.
Precious McKesson was the sole elector in Nebraska to cast the vote for President-elect Joe Biden today.
Nebraska is one of only two states that splits its electoral college votes. The Electoral College cast four votes for Trump and one for Biden.
“It was so monumental to be in a room with so many of my close friends and families and supporters. And when I walked in they started cheering me. It was an honor to do it today,” McKesson told CNN’s Dana Bash.
McKesson, who is the first woman of color to cast an electoral vote for a Democrat in the state, also explained why she became emotional when she cast a vote for the first woman and first Black vice president. “It meant so much,” she said.
McKesson also discussed how she was elected as the elector to cast the Democratic vote.
“Prior to me going to work for the Biden/Harris campaign, I do sit as the Black Caucus chair as well as the state Legislative District Holder. Before I’m able to work for them, we had the state convention and you have to go in front of your congressional district and you have to actually ask for them to nominate you and to vote for you. And so, I went in front of my peers and told them I felt that this would be the time for number one, a woman of color and a woman to cast that vote and they voted for me to be able to be the one to represent Congressional District 2.”
Watch the full interview with McKesson:
CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf is answering questions from readers about the Electoral College. You can ask your question here.
Here’s a question from Cathy in Hawaii:
Thank you for this very detailed and incredibly important technical question. Let me start at the end, where you ask for specific links to US law. Here’s a link to Title 3, section 15 of US Code, “Counting Electoral Votes in Congress,” which is about as impenetrable of legalese as you’re likely to see.
To your point, let me clarify the smart issue you’re raising:
Ultimately, if electoral votes cast today are rejected this way, and as a result Biden doesn’t get 270 electoral votes, then the House picks the next president. And, as you note, House members would vote as state delegations in this process to pick the President — 50 total votes.
But the question is about the objections by which Republicans would seek votes to discard electoral votes. In these votes would they vote as state delegations or as members of Congress. If they vote as states, that benefits Republicans, who control more state delegations. If they vote as individuals, with 435 total votes, that benefits Democrats, since they hold a majority in the House.
The answer is that they would vote as individual members and Democrats should be able to defeat any objection.
Here’s why: While law linked above does not say specifically how congresspeople would vote, these objections about electoral votes have been raised twice before and in both instances, the House voted as a 435-member body, according to footnotes in this Congressional Research Service report.
In 1969, an objection was raised about a faithless elector who voted for George Wallace. The House and Senate both considered it and the House voted as a 435-member body. In 2004, California Sen. Barbara Boxer and Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones – both Democrats — objected to the electoral votes from the decisive state of Ohio. Again, the House voted as 435-member body.
It’s not at all clear how many Republicans in either the House or the Senate would vote to ignore voters and prop up a second Trump administration.
Montana’s electors cast their three votes for President Trump during their meeting on Monday in Helena.
Trump won Montana by more than 16 percentage points.
Republican candidates have carried Montana in every presidential election since 1996.
Remember: The meeting of electors is the next major step in the Electoral College process to affirm the general election results. Electors are required by law to vote for president and vice president on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, which this year is today.
It takes 270 electoral votes of the 538 available to become president.
Watch the moment:
One Washington state elector who said he is very ill spoke passionately and emotionally about serving as a faithful elector and casting his electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, in accordance with the will of the state’s voters.
Jack Arends, one of Washington’s 12 electors, said on Monday while he thinks the Electoral College is “not great,” it is part of the US election system, so he was determined to do his role and cast his ballots for Biden and Harris.
In Washington, each presidential candidate’s chosen electors sign a pledge to vote for the nominee of the party that they represent, according to state law.
In 2016, three of Washington’s presidential electors voted for Colin Powell rather than Hillary Clinton and one voted for anti-Keystone XL pipeline protester Faith Spotted Eagle. A $1,000 fine was upheld by the state Supreme Court.
Arends said he believed it was his “duty” to cast his vote affirming Biden’s win in the state to “begin the end of the Trump administration” and “rid our nation of a petty dictator.”
Arends told the body he is in failing health, so it will be up to others to rebuild the nation under a Biden administration.
Several more of Washington state’s 12 electors were critical of the Electoral College in their post-vote speeches, with some speaking in support of reforming or even abolishing the system.
In an exclusive interview, Rep. Paul Mitchell, Republican of Michigan, told CNN that his disgust and disappointment with President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election have led him to request that the Clerk of the House change his party affiliation to “independent,” and to notify GOP leaders in a letter that he is withdrawing his “engagement and association with the Republican Party at both the national and state level.”
Mitchell, who is retiring at the end of this session of Congress, says he fears that the House GOP leadership’s participation in the outgoing President’s conspiracy theories and attempts to disenfranchise millions of American voters to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory could cause “long-term harm to our democracy.”
“This election simply confirms to me that it’s all about power first, and that frankly is disgusting and demoralizing,” Mitchell said.
Asked about how he plans to respond to critics, Mitchell said he would stand “on my principles.”
“Yes, I will take abuse from both the far left and the far right. In my opinion, the extremes of both parties are dragging their parties and this country off a cliff. The majority of Americans are in the middle,” the congressman said. “The majority of Americans want solutions to problems, want us to address them and not see who can have a political win.”
Mitchell added that he believed that the Texas lawsuit was “ridiculous” and he didn’t “believe the brief was appropriate or valid.”
Mitchell was asked about the Michigan Republican House member who was stripped of his committee assignments today after saying there could be violent protests in the state capitol because of the electoral college vote.
“When you can’t conduct an election without threats of violence, we become a third world nation. What are we, Venezuela? It’s ridiculous,” Mitchell told CNN.
Read Mitchell’s full letter here.
Watch Rep. Mitchell’s interview:
President Trump is already looking past today’s electoral college vote as he sees one final avenue to block Joe Biden from becoming the next president — the official tallying of votes in the House of Representatives on Jan. 6, a White House adviser said.
The adviser described the option as yet another “long shot,” much like the Trump team legal challenges that went nowhere.
The reality is the prospect of upending the election results in the House is more than just a “long shot” as Democrats will refuse to go along with any GOP members seeking to overturn Biden’s victory.
House members can challenge the results on Jan. 6, when Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to preside over the official tallying of the electoral votes. But those members would need a Republican senator to sign on to the effort.
Even if the GOP effort makes it that far, the Democratic controlled House would vote down such a maneuver.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany declined to answer whether Trump would accept today’s electoral college results. She told reporters that she could not stop to take questions as it was raining at the time. She was holding an umbrella.
