Electoral College Count To Move Biden Closer To White House

UNION, NJ — As both a historian and former presidential elector, Frank Argote-Freyre has a firm grasp at how unprecedented and combative the weeks have been since the Nov. 3 general election as President-elect Joe Biden moves forward to his inauguration and the White House.

Election officials in a number of key states required weeks after the election to make Biden’s victories over President Donald Trump official — only to see Trump make one unsuccessful legal attempt after another to overturn results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states.

On Monday — nearly a week after the “safe harbor” deadline passed for states to certify election results — representatives will convene in state capitols across the country to officially cast their Electoral College votes. A total of 538 Electoral College votes are up for grabs during each presidential election, and each state chooses temporary electors who then serve as the delegates for Monday's proceedings when the votes are cast inside of the states' chambers.

That vote will then be counted and ratified by Congress on Jan. 6 — 14 days before Biden is to take office, and likely without Trump ever conceding the election. But after the "safe harbor" deadline passed Wednesday, Biden was almost assured of going into Monday with 302 Electoral College votes pledged to him, despite Trump's continued claims that the election was unfairly taken from him.

The "safe harbor" rule was made in the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which says that if there are disputes over election results in states and the results are settled "at least six days before the time fixed for the meeting of electors," those results are conclusive and must be accepted by Congress.

Argote-Freyre — a professor of history at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, and who served as an elector in 2012 — does not anticipate any fireworks in Monday’s proceedings. But he believes this election cycle will be remembered historically both for Trump’s efforts to overturn an American election and for perhaps the latest example of why many will continue to push to do away with what they see as an antiquated Electoral College process.

Until 2000, it was rare that a presidential candidate didn’t garner both the popular and Electoral College vote, the professor said. Only Benjamin Harrison, John Quincy Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes (1824, 1876) won the presidency without capturing the popular vote, which limited the occasions the Electoral College was called into question.

But when George W. Bush gained control of the White House without winning the popular vote and Trump did so in 2016, the clamoring to do away with the Electoral College began to increase, Argote-Freyre said.

According to the Congressional Research Service, there have been nearly 700 attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College. The biggest push came after the 1968 election, when Richard Nixon gained the White House despite the efforts of Gov. George Wallace, who ran as an independent and earned a number of Electoral College votes, although not nearly as many as Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey.

Yet, despite elections when the popular vote and Electoral College vote have not meshed, the current system has remained in place.

“That’s what has been surprising — we have become accustomed before the 2000 race of thinking the popular vote as being determinative,” Argote-Freyre told Patch in a telephone interview this week. “It wasn’t, but we had fallen into that perception.”

By the time Monday’s Electoral College proceedings take place, Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s election will have all but run their course, the associate professor said. The process will move forward despite Trump’s best efforts to convince the powers that be — including the U.S. Supreme Court — to rule in his favor.

With electors bound by state law to cast votes for whomever their party elected last month, Monday should be relatively drama-free, Argote-Freyre said. In 2016, five electors — five Democrats and two Republicans — broke their pledge and became what is called “faithless electors” to cast votes for Bernie Sanders, Colin Powell and Ron Paul.

In those cases, faithless electors face fines in 33 states and the District of Columbia, which require electors to hold true to their party’s candidates. Once Electoral College votes are cast by paper ballot on Monday, the results are to be signed, sealed and sent by registered mail to Vice President Mike Pence, who will oversee the ratification of the Electoral College votes — as Biden did four years ago.

According to the Poynter Institute, in addition to one certificate being sent to Pence, another is sent to Trump, and one is sent to the secretary of state in each state as well as to the National Archives. While the efforts of the faithless electors four years ago did not affect the outcome of the 2016 Electoral College process, many election experts believe such actions offer a greater reason to abolish the Electoral College process and rely solely on the popular vote.

To do so, however, would require a constitutional amendment — which would need approval from two-thirds of Congress and another the approval of two-thirds of state legislatures, Argote-Freyre said.

According to a Gallup poll conducted in September, 61 percent of Americans support doing away with the Electoral College, which has been in place since 1787, when it came to be part of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The framers of the Constitution, with then no political parties in place, formed the Electoral College as a compromise between the election of the president by a vote of Congress and the election of a president by the vote of citizens, according to the National Archives' website.

Once votes are cast on Monday, the counting of the Electoral College next month will make the election results official — but that may not occur without a challenge, Argote-Freyre said. Republican senators, including Alabama's Mo Brooks, have indicated they will dispute the outcome, falling in line with Trump's claims that the election’s results were fraudulent. In an interview earlier this month, Brooks said he is challenging the results to "reject the count of particular states" that he said had "flawed election systems."

However, members of the House of Representatives would need to join the effort to challenge the Electoral College results. But that could be a tall order, with Congress being split and more Republicans backing off their support of Trump’s efforts, Argote-Freyre educator said. In order for a challenge to move forward, legislators from both the House and Senate would need to participate, according to Argote-Freyre. If enough objections were raised, the matter would need to go to a vote of the House and Senate, which would both need to vote to overturn the election results.

Such objections were raised by Democrats following Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton, but those claims were not supported by Republicans, which is likely to happen in reverse order in January should objections be raised.

Challenges have been raised in the past, but none reached the point to where they impact the president-elect’s standing, which is again expected to be the case as this process continues.

"As a practical matter, I don’t think there’s any realistic expectation that Biden’s inauguration is vulnerable to what will happen in Congress on Jan. 6," Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley said, according to a story posted on the Poynter Institute website.

More than 100 Republican U.S. representatives publicly pledged support for Trump’s efforts to have the Supreme Court hear a lawsuit brought by the Texas attorney general seeking to overturn election results in four key states. However, several other state attorneys general have scoffed at the measure, referring to the suit as a publicity stunt and political theater.

For all of the noise and the drama that has taken place since the election, it has fallen flat because of the lack of evidence of fraud or election injustice, Argote-Freyre said, and Biden’s victory should become official in the coming weeks.

"The chances ... are next to nil that there will be any substantive change,” Argote-Freyre said. “Trump is done as far as I’m concerned and as far as I can see as I look into my crystal ball. I think he’s finished.”