Skip to main content

All major battleground states in the 2020 election officially certify their results, cementing Biden's victory in the presidential race


All the key battleground states in the 2020 presidential election have now certified their election results, cementing President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Donald Trump.

The six battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin certified their results for Biden as of November 30.

The canvassing and certification came under a national spotlight because of the efforts from Trump and his allies to challenge the election results in court and spread baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

All the key battleground states in the 2020 presidential race have now certified their election results, cementing President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Donald Trump.

Biden won the Electoral College with 306 electoral votes, compared with 232 for Trump. The former vice president flipped five states that Trump won in 2016: the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; Arizona, which a Democratic presidential candidate had not carried since 1996; and Georgia, which a Democratic presidential candidate hadn't won since 1992.

After all the votes come in, election officials thoroughly canvass the votes cast before elected officials can be seated.

During the canvassing process, local election officials process and adjudicate provisional ballots and, in many states, late-arriving domestic mail ballots and absentee ballots from overseas and military voters. In some states, the canvassing process can also include mandatory audits or recounts. Once every vote is properly accounted for, officials then certify the results.

In most elections, the canvassing and certification process doesn't receive much public attention or scrutiny. But in 2020, the actions and decisions of local officials and canvassing boards were thrust into the national spotlight because of the efforts from Trump and his allies to challenge the election results in court and spread unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, as well as election irregularities in the states that the president lost.

Georgia certified its election results on November 20 after completing a statewide risk-limiting audit, the first of its kind in the South, in which election workers recounted by hand over 5 million ballots that confirmed Biden's narrow victory over Trump. After certification, the Trump campaign also requested a machine recount, which is expected to finish up this week.

Michigan's Board of State Canvassers then certified the state's results for Biden on November 23 after hearing nearly three hours of public comment. One day later, the two battleground states of Pennsylvania and Nevada also certified their statewide presidential results.

Arizona's governor certified the state's election results on Monday as Trump allies including Rudy Giuliani held a press conference where they continued to push unfounded claims of fraud and malfeasance in the election.

The chairwoman of the Wisconsin Election Commission on Monday confirmed Biden as the winner of the state's 10 Electoral College votes, and Gov. Tony Evers officially certified the results that evening. The Trump campaign requested recounts in Milwaukee and Dane counties, both of which affirmed Biden's victory in the state and netted Biden 87 votes.

The battleground states that Trump won, including Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and North Carolina, have also formally certified their results.

Read more: Joe Biden is hiring about 4,000 political staffers to work in the White House and federal agencies. Here's how you can boost your chances getting a job in the new administration, according to 3 experts.

Trump and his allies lost over two dozen lawsuits they filed to halt vote counting, get certain ballots disqualified, and delay certification of election results in the battleground states that Trump lost, according to Insider's Jacob Shamsian and Sonam Sheth.

Then the Trump campaign and the president's allies pivoted to attempting to compel state and local officials to delay certifying the results of the election. While many states allow campaigns to request recounts after certification, it's much harder for campaigns to legally challenge election results after states have certified those results.

The next step in the process of Biden taking over the presidency is for the entire slate of presidential electors to meet and cast their votes in every state and the District of Columbia on December 14.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Biden says K-12 education isn't working — calls for free pre-K to "grade 14"

President Joe Biden on Wednesday praised the nation's K-12 education system for fueling America's economic growth for almost a century. But, he stressed, that system may no longer be sufficient as the foundation for future prosperity. Mr. Biden's American Families Plan is taking aim at an issue that has bedeviled economists as well as millions of families struggling to stay afloat financially: A high school diploma is no longer enough to secure a middle-class life. Under the White House proposal, the nation's K-12 system would be expanded on both ends — from free pre-kindergarten education through a "grade 14," funding two years of schooling before kindergarten and two years of post-high school education through free community college. There's plenty of economic research that links rising high school graduation rates throughout the 20th century to faster U.S. economic growth. For example, broadening education help women enter the workforce and enabled men ...

In Trump Farm Bailout, Top 1% Reaped Nearly One-Fourth of Aid

LISTEN TO ARTICLE 4:43 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg The Trump administration’s farm bailouts steered an expanding share of subsidy payments to the nation’s biggest farms, according to an analysis by an environmental advocacy group that highlights issues of equity as the Biden administration designs potential new climate-related financial incentives for farmers. Just 1% of farm aid recipients collected 23% of subsidy payments in 2019, up from 17% in 2016, as former President Donald Trump’s trade bailout swelled payments to farmers. Their portion crept up to 24% in the first half of 2020, the most recent period covered in the data, as farm aid hit a record level with coronavirus relief payments, according to the Environmental Working Group analysis. That is the largest share of federal farm subsidies going to the top 1% -- the 7,873 subsidy recipients who got the highest payments -- since 2007, accordi...

Hundreds of Trump supporters stuck in the cold for hours when buses can’t reach Omaha rally

The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold, as police scrambled to help those most at-risk get to warmth. At least seven people were taken to hospitals, according to Omaha Scanner, which monitors official radio traffic. Police and fire authorities didn’t immediately return messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday and declined to provide reporters on the scene with precise numbers of how many needed treatment. The Trump campaign said it had provided enough buses but that traffic on the two-lane road outside the airport was throttled to one direction after the rally, tweeted Aaron Sanderford, a political reporter at the Omaha World-Herald. The campaign didn’t immediately respond to a message from The Post early on Wednesday. AD AD The confusion and the freezing weather added to the health risks that accompany every Trump rally during the novel coronavirus p...