President-elect Joe Biden has received enough electoral votes to officially clinch the presidency, a major milestone that he reached when California’s electors awarded him the state’s 55 electoral votes at their meeting Monday in Sacramento.
The president-elect passed the threshold after California cast its 55 votes for Mr. Biden on Monday evening, capping a day marked by heightened security in battleground states and an unusual level of scrutiny for what is normally a formal, procedural affair.
With supporters of Mr. Trump promising to mount protests outside of some statehouses, officials took extra steps to ensure the safety of the electors. Lawmakers in Michigan, citing credible threats, closed the Capitol building to the public, as did Wisconsin, where electors in Madison were ushered into a side entrance at the State Capitol for the noon vote.
Yet Monday’s votes were largely smooth; there were no protests that disrupted the proceedings. Indeed, in many battleground states, police presence outnumbered protesters, and the normally staid process carried out by the Electoral College went uninterrupted.
“It’s not just out of tradition but to show folks, especially now more than ever, our system works,” said Gov. Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, before the electors in his state all cast their votes for Mr. Biden on Monday morning.
The vote on Monday officially sends Mr. Biden to the White House, assuming the presidency after a trying election marked by deep divisions and a devastating pandemic that crippled the country and disrupted voting. Mr. Biden has been working aggressively to fill out his cabinet to prepare for when he takes office in January, aiming to have a team ready to combat the coronavirus and begin the long recovery.
The president-elect is expected to speak tonight about the Electoral College results.
The vote follows six weeks of unprecedented efforts by Mr. Trump to intervene in the electoral process and change the outcome of an election he lost by about seven million votes. He was joined by many Republicans who supported his unfounded claims of voter fraud, including 126party members and 17 state attorneys general who supported a case before the Supreme Court that legal experts said had no merit. The court rejected the case on Friday.
