The Election's Controversy
By Liam McCarthy ('22) and Agne Adomauskaite ('22)
As of Monday, December 14th, the Electoral College confirmed that Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. This year, the gathering held substantial importance because of Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the election results. Though there was much controversy surrounding this election, Joe Biden prevailed as he received 306 electoral votes, as compared to Donald Trump’s 232 electoral votes, according to AP News. All around the country, the 535 electors met under the most unusual circumstances as they cast their ballots while following COVID-19 guidelines. According to NBC News, Indiana, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Vermont were among the first states to vote. At the beginning of the election, Trump showed an early lead with 22 combined votes from Tennessee and Indiana while Biden received a total of 7 votes from both Vermont and New Hampshire. However, the tide shifted when three battleground states voted. Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania all cast their votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
With this election came a huge increase in the amount of mail-in ballots. According to CBS News, Trump believes that the votes were not counted accurately and that he won by a landslide. However, electors from the six key swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—all cast their votes in favor of Joe Biden. These states were previously argued to be won by Donald Trump, which proved to cause much controversy.
During an interview with Fox News, Trump claimed “I worry about the country having an illegitimate president, that’s what I worry about. A president that lost and lost badly.” Though recently Trump has failed to campaign to reverse the results of the election, he refuses to go down without a fight.
According to CBS News, as of December 22nd Trump has declared that he and his team are interested in going back to court to fight against the electoral vote’s outcome. Andy Biggs, Congressmen of Arizona, claims "We think we're going to actually be able to contest this, as you say, with at least one objection from the House — and we'll have dozens of objectors in the House — and then at least one in the Senate, and we think we'll have more than that."
On January 6th, when Congress officially convenes to count the electoral votes, members can object to the returns from any individual state. CBS News explains that this opens up an opportunity for Trump’s GOP allies to contest a state’s results. Those objections have to be made in writing by the means of at least one member of the House and the Senate. If any objections are made the two chambers will recess and debate the objection. Both the House and the Senate vote one at a time to simply reject or reject the objection.
President-elect Joe Biden happily received the news. According to The Wall Street Journal, he stated, “At the time, President Trump called his Electoral College tally a landslide. By his own standards, these numbers represented a clear victory then, and I respectfully suggest they do so now.” Despite the ongoing pandemic, the citizens of America voted in record numbers. Biden went on to say this showed the democracy, “pushed, tested, and threatened—proved to be resilient, true, and strong.” Joe Biden is set to be inaugurated on January 20th. The nation will soon face a new era under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
