Written by Tasia Lundberg (News Editor)
On Thursday, January 7th, Congress announced Biden’s victory after the hectic process of counting the Electoral College votes by Congress. This event was supposed to only take place on January 6th, however, due to some unforeseen events it had to be delayed. However, despite Biden’s win and prediction of his win, there have been attempts weeks prior to the announcement by President Trump to overturn the election. In a released phone call, Trump was pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffenspergar to find 11,780 votes that why not even there since Biden had won Georgia fairly. However, that did not stop the still ongoing attempts to overturn the election.
During the counting of the 2021 Electoral College votes certification, there was an effort to stop the count swing states, when a group of six Republican legislators rejected the counting of Biden’s win in swing states, such as Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. These objections were quickly shot down due to the lack of a co-sign by a senator. This was the first time one of the ballot counts events drew so much attention due to the number of objections and attempts to stop it since the Civil War. This stem of objections came from a widespread conspiracy that there was election fraud involved, however, there is still no proof for the fraud. There were Republican Party members who did not support the objections and voted against them. The objections did not end there, for the first time in history the ballot counts had to be stopped due to what can be described as a raid on the Capitol. Many Trump supporters, who were upset with the upcoming outcome of the election, raided the Capitol during the counts and debate over the swing state Arizona’s votes. This delayed the count for several hours and was seen as an attempt to overturn Trump’s loss.
The raid on the Capitol caused a slight “change of heart” from some Republican Legislators who were planning on objecting to the election of Biden. This could be seen as a way to save their careers due to the negativity that the raid received and how the President seemed to endorse it, which could cause some public dispute and negative light to be placed on their careers. Kelly Loeffler, who was the Senator of Georgia (lost re-election to Democrat Raphael Warnock) was quick to change her objections after these events conspired since it “forced her to reconsider.” Along with Loeffler, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers also voted to certify the results of Biden’s win, and also wished for Trump to condemn the violence that was caused by his following. However, she was the only lawmaker to vote against Trump’s impeachment, which was a result of the storm on the Capitol. Still, politicians upheld the objection and still wanted to debate it, such as Senator Ted Cruz, who did not condemn any violence from either party, since in the end, it would not support the cause they are trying to fight for, and he still held his stand on objecting. Some other politicians such as Kevin McCarthy (the house minority later) called the rioters un-American, and did not support the violence, but proceeded to say that there were still problems with the elections and the votes, and it was the only way to change the election problems.
Despite the chaos that ensued during the Electoral College vote counting, Biden was declared the winner of the election. Because of this chaos, President Trump is being impeached. For the first time in history, the counting of the Electoral College votes had been halted due to unnecessary events, however, it still proceeded, declaring Biden the winner.
The Claw 