What Happens Now That the Electoral College Confirmed Biden’s Win Yet Again?

Will we see more attempts to overthrow American democracy?

For someone who doesn’t like losing, soon-to-be-former President Trump continues to put himself up for devastating loss after devastating loss.

As he predicted, one of his nonsense lawsuits, the one from the state of Texas, made it all the way to the Supreme Court. What he didn’t predict was the conservative court unanimously dismissed the case almost immediately.

And now it’s official. The electoral college has met and affirmed victory for Joe Biden. There were no faithless electors. No state legislatures replaced the winning party’s electors for Trump loyalists. The day passed with no surprises, as it does every four years in America.

As I am writing this, the news broke that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has at long last acknowledged Biden’s win. Notably, this was after Vladimir Putin, but still, it’s progress. Surely this will open the floodgates for other members of Congress to follow suit.

This should be the end of things. Well, the end of things should have been Saturday, November 7th, when the major news media outlets called the election for Biden. But it wasn’t. And December 14th’s electoral college vote won’t be either.

What happens next? A brief timeline.

December 23rd, 2020. The next big date for the election process is December 23rd. This is the deadline when the certified votes from the electoral college must reach Congress. In the old days, they needed this much time to get the votes delivered.

January 6, 2021. Vice President Mike Pence will preside over a joint session of Congress. It’s merely a formality where votes are tabulated, and the winner is declared. No rulings are made this day. No decisions. It’s simply counting certified electoral votes.

However, should we expect drama on this day? Most certainly. Will it make a difference in the outcome? Most certainly not.

January 20, 2021. On this day, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States of America, with Kamala Harris as his vice president. President Trump does not need to concede for this to happen. Nor is anyone expecting him to.

Will this all go smoothly? Or will we have drama?

Both will occur. Congress will meet on January 6th. Biden will be announced as the winner. Biden will be sworn in two weeks later.

But it won’t be without a serving of drama on the side. We will have crazy Trump tweets, dumb things will be said by Sean Hannity, there will be threats from Trump followers, maybe some protests, and a few of his supporters in Congress will likely attempt an unsuccessful coup.

What’s this about a coup?

It won’t work. But they may still try it. A handful of Republicans have appointed “alternate” electors in Michigan and Georgia. As the official electoral voters were voting, these phony electors cast their votes for Trump. The phony votes are not valid, and they will not be sent to Congress. What they have done is set up Trump supporters to believe there is still a chance he’ll get another term.

And then there is the matter of Congress meeting to certify the vote on January 6th. If there are no objections to the state certificates, the winner is certified. The last step is the inauguration.

And here is where it gets messy. If a member of the House and a member of the Senate challenge a state’s electors, Congress must deliberate on it.

There are a few House Republicans who have said they plan on challenging the votes in swing states. (Only the swing states that voted for Biden, of course.) It only takes one senator to sign off on the objection. And though no senators have indicated they would do so, it’s not unthinkable to imagine someone might.

If this happens, the House and the Senate must meet separately to make their decision. Both must have a majority to overturn the state’s electors. There is zero chance the Democratic-ruled House will do this. There is almost no chance the Republican-controlled Senate will do it either.

There are already several Republican senators that have stated there was no widespread voter fraud, and the Senate Majority leader McConnell has acknowledged Biden is the president-elect. According to the New York Times, McConnell pleaded with senators not to commit this desperate act.

There may be some political theater, but nothing will be overthrown on January 6th.

If it’s obvious he’s lost, why won’t Trump concede?

One, he’s not the kind of person to take the high road and move on. His niece, psychologist Mary Trump believes her uncle is “psychologically incapable of processing this kind of loss.”

Second, there is so much money involved. By keeping the “fight” going, at least in the eyes of his followers, he has raked in over $207.5 million since he lost the election. 75% of that has gone directly to his newly created political action committee. If he wants to announce his bid for 2024 and begin throwing rallies, he will be well-funded to do whatever he wants.

Don’t expect the MAGA rallies to go away anytime soon.

It may not be a drama-free January 6th. Many of us will be riveted to our favorite cable news channel watching yet another procedure we never thought about before, let alone sat and watched. But make no mistake. By the end of the day, the 306 electoral college votes for Biden will be certified, and Trump will be one step closer to the end of the road.

One good thing that has come from the false cries of fraud and the phony lawsuits and the fake alternate electors is that more American people understand the process of the electoral college better than ever before. And we can see it’s a messy, outdated system that needs to be done away with.

Democracy prevailed this time, but what if Trump had a better legal team than the one led by Rudy Giuliani? What if one of those judges that dismissed the frivolous cases was a true Trump loyalist and allowed legitimate votes to be thrown out? What if a state legislature in a swing state had appointed Trump loyalists instead of the winning party’s electors?

Instead of fodder for jokes on late-night TV about Giuliani’s leaking hair dye and weird choice of venues for press briefings, this could have been a disaster. This could have been the end of American democracy.