Electoral College seals Biden victory
Congressmen Bost, LaHood backed Trump bid to subvert election results
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot casts her Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris Monday in the state Capitol. (NBC News)
By Ted Cox
The Electoral College sealed the 2020 president election Monday for Joe Biden.
The 20 Illinois members of the Electoral College cast their votes in the state Capitol in Springfield for Biden Monday morning, immediately certified by Gov. Pritzker and Secretary of State Jesse White. Others were scheduled to join them Monday in states across the nation to affirm the results from Nov. 3, and by late afternoon Biden had cross the 270 mark assuring his victory. Congress was scheduled to ratify the results Jan. 6, two weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, with the tally expected to be 306-232.
President Trump continues to maintain — without evidence — that he won reelection. He was backed last week by 18 GOP state attorneys general and more than 100 Republicans in in the U.S. House — including Illinois Congressmen Mike Bost of Murphysboro and Darin LaHood of Peoria — who threw their support behind a Texas lawsuit trying to throw out ballots cast by mail in four other key battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined other state counterparts in opposing that suit.
President Trump and U.S. Rep. Mike Bost attend a 2018 campaign rally in Murphysboro. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
The U.S. Supreme Court threw that case out Friday, refusing to even hear it.
Trump has rallied Republicans to his cause, with polls showing three-quarters of GOP voters believe his false claims of election fraud. But even the most conservative U.S. news media have rejected that in increasingly strong terms in the weeks since the last votes were cast. The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial Monday under the headline “Trump’s challenge is over.” It opened: “The Electoral College meets Monday to cast its votes for president, officially marking Joe Biden as the election winner. President Trump’s legal challenges have run their course, and he and the rest of the Republican Party can help the country and themselves by acknowledging the result and moving on.” The Journal called the Supreme Court’s ruling the “last legal gasp” of Trump’s resistance.
Some newspapers across the country withdrew their endorsements of the Republican congressmen who backed Trump and his seditious claims. The Chicago Tribune pulled up short of that in an editorial Monday, but also opened an editorial clearly stating: “President Donald Trump lost his reelection bid. Joe Biden won.” The editorial called Bost and LaHood “Illinois’s congressional enablers” for Trump and his false claims, and it quoted their colleague U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Channahon as stating that “you may not like the outcome, but that doesn’t men our 2020 election is fake. It was real — it counts — and we need to move forward.”
The Trib editorial concluded: “The cynical claims of a rigged election need to stop because unfounded insinuations of electoral foul play do have consequences. They feed divisions and sow mistrust in the political system as a whole.”
On Saturday, Trump backers marched in Washington, D.C., but the protest turned violent in the evening, with The Washington Post reporting at least four people were stabbed near “a gathering point for the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist organization with ties to white nationalism” that took part in the protest.
The Electoral College vote Monday should help to calm those protests, and congressional Republicans should resist the temptation to tamper with the formal ratification Jan. 6. As the Tribune put it: “Biden won. Trump lost. Republicans, including Bost and LaHood, need to say that.”
Biden was slated to address the nation after the Electoral College count is complete, with Hawaii set to register its votes at 6 p.m. Central Time.