HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania on Monday cast its 20 electoral votes for Democrat Joe Biden, the native son whose win in the state last month cemented his victory over President Donald Trump.
The electors, primarily Democratic elected officials, also chose Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, as vice president. The 20 electors were socially distanced in a cavernous auditorium near the Capitol, meeting there instead of the floor of the state House because of the pandemic.
One by one, each elector walked up to the auditorium stage and dropped his or her ballot into a box designed by Benjamin Franklin. The electors gave the vote tally a standing ovation.
Nancy Mills, president of the state’s Electoral College and state Democratic Party chairperson, noted it was Pennsylvania that put Biden over the 270-vote threshold needed to claim the White House.
“We are the state that returned the dignity and honor to the United States of America,” she said.
The Electoral College meeting, normally a formality, drew extra attention this year because of the Trump campaign’s baseless claims of a rigged election and its fruitless legal machinations to try to get the results overturned.
Trump loyalists in Pennsylvania held a rival meeting in Harrisburg on Monday and said they cast what they described as a “conditional vote” for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. The state Republican Party said the Trump electors met at the request of the campaign.
“We took this procedural vote to preserve any legal claims that may be presented going forward,” Bernie Comfort, Trump’s Pennsylvania chairperson, said in a statement. “This was in no way an effort to usurp or contest the will of the Pennsylvania voters.”
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