Biden moves a step closer to presidency as deadline for voter tally ends

WASHINGTON • Mr Joe Biden will be one formal step closer to the US presidency after yesterday's deadline for states to certify their slates of electors to the electoral college - locking in the names of the people who will formally vote to make Mr Biden the president.

Once that happens, there is little turning back. Congress must by law accept those electors if there is no outstanding litigation, and President Donald Trump's legal challenges have even less hope of changing the outcome.

Electors meet in each state next Monday to officially cast their votes. All of the battleground states where Mr Trump tried to contest the results have certified their presidential election tallies and appointed their electors for Mr Biden, and he has more than the 270 electoral college votes needed.

Only Colorado and Hawaii are left to certify their results among the states Mr Biden won, but even they cannot change the outcome.

Federal law says that if a state appoints its electors and all litigation is resolved by Dec 8 - the so-called safe harbour deadline - Congress must consider them "conclusive" when it meets in a joint session on Jan 6 to tally the votes.

Normally, the deadline passes without much notice. But this year, Mr Trump has refused to concede despite Mr Biden's clear victory with 306 electoral college votes.

Mr Trump and his allies have claimed, without evidence, that the election was "rigged" and that he actually won. There is still pending litigation in Wisconsin and some other states, but the Biden electors are valid even if the lawsuits are not resolved until after the safe harbour deadline, said Professor Edward Foley, the director of an election-law programme at Ohio State University who has studied disputed elections.

As long as there is only one submission of electoral votes from a state, Congress must accept it unless it is rejected by both chambers - which is not going to happen, Prof Foley said.

Congress can still accept a submission that lacks safe harbour status, he said. "They won't jeopardise Biden's inauguration, and they're not going to jeopardise the ability of the electors to meet and cast their votes," Prof Foley said of the outstanding suits.

Lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign, led by his lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, plus cases brought by Republican groups, have largely been rejected for a lack of evidence. They include challenges to the results in Arizona and Nevada.

Mr Trump's campaign and his allies are 1-49 in post-election litigation, according to a count from Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, and many legal experts do not expect litigation will overturn results - especially now that they have been certified in the contested battleground states.

Even so, several election lawsuits are outstanding and continue to be filed. In Wisconsin, Mr Trump's campaign re-filed a complaint in the state court on Monday over vote tallies in two heavily Democratic counties - days after the state's Supreme Court rejected the president's attempt to take his challenge over mail-in ballots directly to that court.

Republican-led challenges in Pennsylvania state court are further along, but have failed to gain traction. And two federal lawsuits seeking to de-certify Mr Biden's wins in Michigan and Georgia, filed by former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, fizzled out on Monday.

There could still be objections to Mr Biden's electors when Congress meets on Jan 6 to count each state's electoral votes, and Republican Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama has said he intends to make one.

Yet any such challenge must be made by both a House and a Senate member. Even if that happens, each chamber would then meet to resolve the objection and it would almost certainly fail, said Professor Alexander Keyssar of the Harvard Kennedy School who has studied the Electoral College.

"We're going to see some little action here, but I think it's going to be inconsequential," Prof Keyssar said.

BLOOMBERG