The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

The penultimate episode of the United States electoral drama is played this Monday

2020-12-14T02:49:40.218Z


Electoral College members vote will confirm Biden's victory amid pressure from Trump, but some Republicans plan to take the battle to Congress.


The tragicomedy that the US elections have become faces its penultimate chapter on Monday.

The members of the Electoral College meet in their respective states to cast their votes and thus formalize the victory of Democrat Joe Biden, a procedure that usually passes without pain or glory but which, this time, is developed under the extraordinary pressure of the still president, Donald Trump, who continues to launch unfounded accusations of fraud.

After failing in the courts, some Republicans plan to take the battle until the January 6 session of Congress - when both houses must count the ballots this Monday - to try to prevent them from ratifying Biden.

"The pendulum states that have encountered massive electoral fraud, which are all, cannot legally certify these votes as complete and correct without committing a severely punishable offense," Trump wrote this Sunday night on Twitter, as a veiled threat.

Since he was declared the loser of the November 3 elections, the Republican is pressuring his party officials in those key territories to violate the will expressed at the polls, which he calls illegitimate, and this Monday they will grant him in the re-election.

In the US presidential elections, the individual vote of each citizen is what is known as the popular vote and it is not used to elect the candidate directly, but to designate a series of delegates, the members of the Electoral College.

These are a total of 538 nationwide that are divided among states based on their weight in Congress (California, which is the largest, has 55).

Most of the territories work through a system of

winner-takes-all

, that is, whoever gets the majority of popular votes in said territory, even if it is by the minimum, takes all the delegates.

To win, it takes 270 electoral votes.

Biden got 306 (with a 6 million popular vote lead) and Trump stayed at 232.

What the president and his allies have tried is that the republican authorities of territories that have lost in a tight scrutiny (Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, among others) ignore the popular vote and appoint their own delegates, so that this Monday they will not vote for Biden.

But neither local officials nor the different judges who have been asked for such a measure have found any hint of fraud that justifies reversing the democratic will expressed at the polls.

So this Monday, except for a major surprise at the last minute, the members of the Electoral College will ratify that Joe Biden won the elections and will send their certified ballots to the Capitol, in Washington.

A joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives scheduled for January 6 will count and review those certified electoral votes.

With the winner officially declared, only Biden's inauguration remains, on the 20th of the same month.

The Supreme Court's rejection of the lawsuits brought leaves the crusade of Trump and his acolytes practically doomed, but some Republicans are willing to use the last resort of Congress.

According to

The New New York Times

, at the forefront of the latest attempt is Republican Congressman Mo Books of Alabama, who plans to discuss the outcome of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin.

This Sunday, on his Twitter account, he showed his position: “Congress is the final arbiter of who wins the presidential elections, not the Supreme Court.

America's founding fathers did not want dictatorial and unelected judges to make these decisions.

The judicial system is neither prepared nor has the power to decide disputed elections, ”he wrote.

In order to object to these votes, the support of at least one member of the House of Representatives and one of the Senate is necessary.

If successful, the two cameras will listen to the argument and debate it for no more than two hours.

In order to disqualify the votes of a territory, a majority would be required in both, but the low is controlled by the Democrats and the high by the Republicans.

Democrats have tabled motions against these votes in the very recent past (2017, 2011 and 2005), but on all those occasions it was more of a symbolic complaint than a real challenge, as the defeated candidates had already granted victory to their Republican rivals.

This is not the case with Trump, who does not throw in the towel and, in addition, puts pressure on Republicans who do not support him in this crusade, such as the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp.

With the crucial second round of Senate elections that this state holds on January 5 - yes, just the day before - nobody wants to anger the rank and file and silence prevails.

To add dramatic weight to the day of January 6, the person in charge of announcing the result and thus making it official is neither more nor less than the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence, one of Trump's great allies.

From your lips and your signature will come the words you least want to hear.

Subscribe here to the

newsletter

about the elections in the United States

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-12-14

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.