Biden and Harris won on Nov. 3; counts confirm that today

With the final counts being completed, the result of Tuesday's vote is now emerging: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the White House, in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. | Carolyn Kaster / AP

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In many states, including Pennsylvania, where it took until today to confirm an election Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won three days ago, the delay was designed by GOP state legislatures to give Trump a window during which he could sabotage the election.

The successful moves by the GOP to delay release of totals in Pennsylvania collapsed this morning when the state announced Biden had passed Trump in their counts.

Biden, as he has said from Election Night on, has the electoral votes he needs to be confirmed as President-elect Biden and for Kamala Harris to be confirmed as the first woman, first African-American, and first South Asian vice president in U.S. history.

The Biden-Harris team has more than the 270 electoral votes needed to be confirmed the victors, and they won those Electoral College votes and more than a four million vote lead in the popular vote three days ago, not today.

The Biden-Harris lead in the Keystone State was finally confirmed around 6 a.m. this morning when networks, still not admitting he won this election days ago, said he took “a 5,000 or more lead” in the count.

At 1 a.m. this morning, Joe Biden’s Election Day lead in Georgia was also confirmed for the first time.

Georgia, long considered a solidly red state, is likely never to be viewed that way again thanks to powerful grassroots movements led by people like Stacey Abrams who only narrowly lost a gubernatorial race because of voter suppression engineered by her Republican opponent who controlled the elections process in the state at the time. Since that 2018 loss, she spearheaded a voter registration drive that added 800,000 people to the rolls in her state.

All eyes will be on Georgia now because John Ossoff, the Democrat, held David Perdue, the Republican, below 50 percent, forcing a January runoff. This will be one of two Senate runoffs in Georgia, the other race being between Republican Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock. Democratic victories in those January races could result in pulling the U.S Senate out of the control of the GOP.

At any rate, the contests will be the centers for mobilization by mass movements across the country for the next two months. Unprecedented hundreds of millions of dollars will be poured into the state by Wall Street, determined as it is to keep the Senate in Republican control.

Sanctimonious calls from pundits and GOP lawmakers this morning that networks should wait before they make official calls only serve to give Trump more time to step up his attempts to call into question the legitimacy of the election.

The snail’s pace counting in Pennsylvania reflects an intentional plan by the GOP to set up that scenario in states where they expected Biden to win and smooth sailing in states where they expected Trump to win.

In Florida, for example, we witnessed one of the smoothest and fastest elections ever, in a state with a history of being almost unable to figure out how to open envelopes on Election Day.

Florida Republicans in control of the elections process allowed counting of mail ballots to commence as soon as they came, expecting that could produce a dramatic clear early win for Trump and make it easier for him to declare an overall victory.

In Pennsylvania, the GOP legislature insisted on keeping in place rules that forbid even touching mail-in and absentee ballots until Election Day, allowing Trump a window of time during which to spread the idea that something nefarious was going on in a state he is losing.

Always flexible in the way they obstruct elections, the Trumpites extended that flexible approach to the way they pursue court challenges.

In states where Biden is ahead, they file suits to stop the counts and in states where they are ahead, they demand that the counts be continued.

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Wojcik

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.