Biden Certified as Winner of Pennsylvania in Presidential Election
HARRISBURG, Pa. (CN) — Pennsylvania officials certified the state’s election results Tuesday, declaring President-elect Joe Biden the state’s winner by roughly 80,500 votes.
Shortly after Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar certified the results, the state’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf signed the Certificate of Ascertainment, marking Biden’s final vote tally at 3,458,229 and President Donald Trump’s at 3,377,674. The state is worth 20 electoral college votes.
Wolf’s certificate named 20 Biden electors who will gather Dec. 14 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to cast their votes to the Electoral College.
The governor expressed gratitude to state workers Tuesday for their help the process.
“I want to thank the election officials who have administered a fair and free election during an incredibly challenging time in our commonwealth and country’s history,” Wolf said in a tweet Tuesday, announcing the certification. “Our election workers have been under constant attack and they have performed admirably and honorably.”
Boockvar, similarly, offered “a world of thanks to all 67 counties and all of PA’s dedicated election workers, for ensuring that every qualified voter’s vote is counted accurately,” crediting them for the state’s ability to certify its results Tuesday morning, shortly after its Monday deadline.
“The county election officials and the poll workers are the true heroes of our democracy, enabling us to vote in record numbers, amid challenging circumstances, so that every eligible voter’s voice could be heard,” Boockvar said in a statement.
The certification came in spite of several lawsuits filed in the state by the Trump campaign, contesting the results of the presidential election.
Just Monday, the state Supreme Court crushed the Trump campaign’s attempt to have thousands of Pennsylvania mail-in ballots tossed over errors on the envelopes. The order affirmed five Democratic victories in Philadelphia and reversed the only Republican win in the Pittsburgh area, concluding that “failures to include a handwritten name, address or date in the voter declaration on the back of the outer envelope, while constituting technical violations of the Election Code, do not warrant the wholesale disenfranchisement of thousands of Pennsylvania voters.”
Days earlier, a federal judge nixed a separate challenge wherein Trump said millions of Pennsylvania votes should have been discounted over differences in how voters cast their ballots.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann compared Trump’s allegation of an “illegal ‘two-tiered’ voting system” that held voters to different standards depending on whether they voted by mail or in person to Frankenstein’s monster, “haphazardly stitched together.”
The Trump campaign filed Sunday for an expedited review before the Third Circuit, saying it was not asking to block the state’s certification efforts on Monday but would seek decertification “if already certified.” The Third Circuit granted the request Monday morning, giving the campaign a deadline of 4 p.m. Monday to file its brief and Pennsylvania a deadline of 4.p.m. Tuesday to file its response.
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