Joseph Biden won both the electoral college and the popular vote for the 2020 Presidential election.  Although the popular vote does not elect the president, as we had confirmed in 2016, the electoral college requires that the victor collects 270 elector votes to ascend to the presidency.  There are 538 electors: one for each of the senators and representatives in the United States, and half of 538 is 269.  If each candidate for president receives 269 votes you have a tie.  If one of the candidates receives one more vote, then they receive 270 votes and is therefore the winner of the contest.  Joe Biden is predicted to end the election with 306 electors votes once both Georgia and Arizona are called. 

So, there it is.  Joe Biden will have the same 306 elector votes that Donald Trump received in 2016.  Joe Biden is the president-elect of the United States of America.  But it that the end of the argument?  Can Donald Trump still find a way to remain president and defeat Joe Biden?  There are some Republicans in some states that are attempting to exploit a loophole in the Constitution.  That loophole has everything to do with the electoral college.

But Joe Biden won.  Why are we discussing the electoral college?  Remember that the individual votes of Americans do not elect the president.  When we vote, we vote for the electors that represent the state in which we reside.  Those electors are supposed to vote in accordance with the way that the majority of citizens voted in their states.  This is where it gets more complicated.

According to the Presidential Elections Reform Program of the 50 states in the United States, 29 states and the District of Columbia have control over how their electors vote in the electoral college.  You read that correctly.  That means that 21 states do not have control over how their electors votes.  Let us look at the states that control their electors.

The states in blue in this map are compelled by state law to vote in accordance with how the majority of citizens in their states voted.  For example, California is one of these states.  California has 55 electoral votes. Therefore, the electors from the states of California are required to cast all their 55 votes for Joe Biden since he won the majority of votes in that state.  Take a closer look at this map.  Some of these 29 states were won by Biden, and the remainder were won by Trump. Of the states that bind their electors the results are as follows:

So that you do not have to count the individual states for each candidate, Trump has 13 states, but Trump has 17.  Also, we need to look at two other maps for this to make more sense.  Remember that there are 21 states left that do not have bound electors.  Trump won 108 electoral votes from the following 12 states that do not have bound electors:

Joe Biden won 128 electoral votes from the following 9 states that do not have bound electors:

If we refer to the map of the states that have bound electors, Biden won 187 and Trump won 112.  Add of that together and Biden has 315 electoral votes.  Subtract the votes from Nebraska and Maine that split their votes and you get to a total of the projected 306.  Add up the votes that Trump has from the 112 bound and 108 non-bound electors and he has a total of 220 electoral votes.

We went through this exercise to demonstrate that it appears that Joe Biden’s win is safe.  Except for one problem.  If you look at the map of states that Biden won that do not have bound electors, and the map of the states with bound electors, you will notice that Biden won some states whose states legislatures are controlled by Republican majorities.  Several in fact.

While there are several individuals and groups who are setting the stage for this electoral coup, I do not think that this is something that we need to worry about right now.  If the electoral college overturned the will of the people in such a brazen manner, they would suffer greatly in the next election.  The president might be chosen by the electoral college, but local representatives and governors are not.  Short of the possible violence and civil unrest that would surely ensue, far more than the seventy-five million people who voted in this election cycle would surely vote in the 2022 midterm.  The short-term gain would far outweigh the long-term loss.

Democrats need to keep voting in numbers that will overwhelm the opposition.  Especially if we are on the cusp of the majority’s will be overturned nationally.  What do you think?  Do you believe that elected Trump followers will attempt to overturn the will of the majority of the American people? Is it time to create federal laws that govern our elections because we cannot trust the partisanship within parties at the states level?