President-elect Joe Biden officially became president of the United States Friday after California certified its presidential election and appointed 55 electors pledged to vote for Biden on December 14.
California's certification gives Biden 279 Electoral College votes -- nine more than the 270 votes needed to win -- and officially hands him the Electoral College majority needed to become U.S. president. This, despite outgoing president Donald Trump's pathetic and futile attempts to subvert the November 3 election and cling to power.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla's formal approval of Biden's win in the state brought the latter's tally of pledged electors so far to 279, based on a count by the Associated Press. Heavily Democratic California has the largest number of electors in the country due to its huge population of 40 million.
Biden's accrual of more than 270 electors is the first step toward the White House, said Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University.
"It is a legal milestone and the first milestone that has that status," noted Foley. "Everything prior to that was premised on what we call projections."
As a practical matter, Americans "know that Joe Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20," according to Foley.
Election results have now been certified in practically all U.S. states, including crucial swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Michigan, won by Biden where Trump unsuccessfully tried to stop the certification of results.
Despite this, Trump and his allies have filed at least 50 legal cases trying to overturn the results in the swing states Biden won. More than 40 of these lawsuits have either been dismissed or dropped. The remaining have yet to be decided but will all likely lead to more legal defeats for Trump.
Trump and his allies are also making the inane argument Republican legislatures in swing states should appoint a rival set of electors that will vote for Trump and disregard all election votes Biden won.
Thankfully, state Republican leaders have rejected this lunacy. According to federal law, both chambers of Congress will have to vote to accept a competing slate of electors. If they don't, the electors appointed by the states' governors, which are all pledged to Biden in these cases, must be used.
The last remaining move to block Biden's win will be Trump's foolish effort to vote down the electors in Congress.
