President Elect Joe Biden won the election recovering the MidWest and flipping the Republican strongholds of Arizona and Georgia, giving him 306 electoral college votes. In addition, he won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, and with more than 80 million voting him President. The Biden-Harris administration comes into office receiving more votes than any other ticket in American history. Importantly, Biden wins Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, each with stronger margins than Trump did in 2016.
In spite this clear victory, the Trump campaign continues to peddle a disinformation campaign, by bringing a set of frivolous cases to Court, which have created a sequence of more than 55 defeats in state, federal and the Supreme Court.
Their ultimate effort to undermine our Democracy is the legal action of the Attorney General of Texas (joined by the Donald Trump campaign and others) against Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. They pretend to re-litigate, what they unsuccessfully tried in the proper jurisdictional venues, by resorting to the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to hear controversies between States. This attempt will be, like Jeb Bush said in a tweet, killed on arrival. All legal scholars know that the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for controversies among states is not only discretionary under current precedent, but most importantly not applicable to litigate electoral results of a presidential election. One state (or a group of states) have no standing to try to overturn the electoral results of another group of states, because they voted differently and dislike the outcome coming from the electoral college. And much less to argue in the Supreme Court what has already been adjudicated in the courts of each of those states and through the federal courts according to the Elections Clause of the Constitution. The portent of the Texas litigation would undermine the very essence of America’s federalism.
The election is over and the Biden transition on its way to inauguration. Trump is just assembling a fundraising operation, to create a war chest, through a leadership Political Action Committee, by attacking the legitimacy of Biden’s mandate.
Meanwhile, all eyes are posed on Georgia. Two Senate seats that could change the political scenarios and the advancement of the Biden-Harris agenda, as well as a new point of departure that could leave the Trump era behind us, and return decency and the prospects of common ground in Washington.
In addition to the extraordinary work lead by Stacey Abrahams, one must note there is a huge Latino population in Georgia. With close to one million Hispanic people in the greater Atlanta area, slightly above 200 thousand are elegible to vote. Optimizing the turn out of such voting block will be significant to change the outcome of the Georgia Senate seat run-offs.
The recent victory of Deborah González, in her run-off to become the first Latina elected as District Attorney in Georgia, could augur well what can happen in January 5th with the potential election of Democratic candidates John Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock to represent the Peach State in the US Senate. Meanwhile, Trump’s irresponsible fantasy conspiracy claims that the election was rigged, are not helping the Republican candidates in Georgia.
The unprecedented but imperative transition to 46
President Elect Joe Biden won the election recovering the MidWest and flipping the Republican strongholds of Arizona and Georgia, giving him 306 electoral college votes.