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The Electoral College vote takes place Monday, with electors across the country set to anoint Joe Biden president-elect, but unlike previous years when the vote was seen as a formality, the proceedings could be more dramatic amid threats of violence and the continued, unsubstantiated allegations by President Donald Trump that he lost the November election as the result of widespread election fraud.
U.S. presidents are not directly elected by voters. Rather, the Constitution says that citizens must vote in state elections for a candidate. The party of the winning candidate in each state then chooses a slate of electors to vote in the Electoral College.
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Electors from each state will vote at different times and in different places, typically their respective state capital buildings, with the first beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern and the last at 7 p.m. Eastern. The key state to watch will be California, scheduled to begin its ceremony at 5 p.m. Eastern, after which Biden will have secured the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
This year, election officials and electors in many states are taking extra precautions to guard against threats of violence. The Michigan State Capitol will be closed due to “credible threats of violence,” the Washington Post reported, while in Arizona, the vote will be held in an undisclosed location for safety reasons, according to the New York Times.
In Wisconsin, electors were instructed to enter the capitol grounds through an “unmarked side door” to avoid protesters, while electors from the state have said they have received threats of harm against themselves and their families if they follow through with their pledge to vote for Biden.
Trump has consistently stoked the anger of his supporters, tweeting this weekend that swing states “CANNOT LEGALLY CERTIFY these votes as complete & correct without committing a severely punishable crime.” The president has continued to advance allegations of election fraud that have been discredited in the more than 50 court cases he and his allies have lost in seeking to overturn the results of the November election.
On Friday, the Supreme Court decided not to hear a case filed by the state of Texas and joined by the Trump campaign that sought to have the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin declared unconstitutional and effectively hand Trump a second term.
Though there remains active litigation in courts wherein the Trump campaign and its allies are seeking to decertify results in many of the same battleground states, the Supreme Court’s refusal to even hear the Texas case represents a comprehensive rebuke of theories of widespread voter fraud or illegal changes to state election law that cost Trump the election.
Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks on the Electoral College from Wilmington, Del. at around 8 p.m.
