(CN) — The Electoral College on Monday certified Joe Biden as President-elect and Kamala Harris as Vice President-elect of the United States, closing one of the last chapters of the Trump presidency.
There are 538 electors in the college representing all 50 states, and each elector is chosen by either the Democrat or Republican Party well ahead of the general election in November. As certification got underway this morning, each elector cast a vote to represents his or her state’s results from the Nov. 2 contest. The final tally is 306 electoral votes for Biden, and 232 for outgoing President Donald Trump. Only 270 votes are needed for victory.
The next stop under the Constitution is a joint session of Congress where, on January 6 at 1 p.m., lawmakers will convene for the centuries-old tradition of tabulating, inspecting and approving the Electoral College votes. Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the U.S. Senate, will preside over that count.
Typically, the Electoral College certification process is one that draws little fanfare.
But since his defeat in November, Trump has spent almost every day on Twitter or in television appearances proclaiming, against all available evidence, that he won the 2020 election.
He has also yet to concede to Biden formally. While this is a long tradition for losers of the general election, it is in fact a courtesy not a requirement under law for a transition of power to occur.
President-elect Biden is expected to deliver an address about the certifications live from Wilmington, Delaware, around 7:30 p.m. on Monday.
Trump has so far lost 59 lawsuits seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election. His latest defeat was doled out Monday morning by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, where his campaign had alleged fraud and demanded a recount of Milwaukee and Dane counties.
The court rejected the challenge outright hours before Wisconsin certified its electoral count of 10 votes for Biden and Harris.
While Trump’s maneuvering in court has failed time and again, he has employed other tactics in recent weeks, like directly contacting state legislators.
Trump called Pennsylvania’s Speaker of the House Bryan Cutler earlier this month asking for intervention, but his pressure campaign failed after Cutler informed Trump that he had no authority as state speaker to order a special session or recount.
In battleground Pennsylvania, electors on Monday gave Biden all 20 of their votes. Despite a bitter slog between the candidates there during campaign season, the certification was mostly uneventful. Republican electors for the Pennsylvania GOP did, however, opt to hold something known as a “procedural vote” to keep their legal hopes alive for Trump as the clock windows down to the joint session on Jan. 6.
Bernadette Comfort, chair of the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania said the mock vote — which does not have legal force — was not meant to “usurp or contest” the will of Pennsylvania’s voters.
In some states, electors must cast their ballot for the candidate who won the popular election. This is not the case in Pennsylvania where it is the winning candidate who selects the electors. Biden flipped Pennsylvania from red to blue with a total of 3,459,923 votes in his favor to Trump’s 3,378,263.
Electoral voters were cast in waves, beginning with New Hampshire, Tennessee, Vermont, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, South Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Kentucky.
Vermont and New Hampshire gave their combined seven electoral votes to Biden, while Tennessee and Indiana awarded their votes — a total of 22 — to President Trump. Trump won Tennessee by about 60% in November and took Indiana by just over 57%.
In Iowa, where the GOP won the day in November, Trump took six. In Nevada, which Biden won following a lengthy count and recount, the former vice president earned six electoral votes. In Kentucky, a Republican stronghold, all eight electors voted for Trump.