WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump formally won the Electoral College Tuesday as Republican electors affirmed his victory in the Nov. 5 election — with the final certification by Congress on Jan. 6 expected to be a mere formality.
Trump, 78, topped the required 270 electoral votes before 4 p.m. as electors convened in statehouses across the country.
Democratic Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Peter Welch of Vermont protested Monday by introducing a proposed constitutional amendment to do away with the Electoral College, arguing it unfairly benefits more conservative states with smaller populations.
“No one’s vote should count for more based on where they live. The Electoral College is outdated and it’s undemocratic. It’s time to end it,” Schatz said.
The proposed amendment has no chance of passing either chamber of Congress — where two-thirds of members would have to consent — or the requisite number of states — three-fourths — to take effect.
Trump won the popular vote in the Nov. 5 election, meaning such a constitutional amendment would not have changed the outcome.
The president-elect has argued that the Electoral College valuably requires candidates to compete in geographically distinct regions, and that Republicans might fare better in the popular vote if it were abolished because they would focus more on major urban areas.
Although it’s possible in some states for faithless electors to register a recorded dissent from one of the major-party candidates, none had done as of mid-afternoon Tuesday — with defeated Vice President Kamala Harris also maintaining her own Democratic electors.
The electoral ballots — which four years ago were hurried out of the Senate chamber as pro-Trump rioters ransacked the Capitol to disrupt certification of his loss in the 2020 election — will be sent to Washington for final certification.
Bipartisan legislation passed in 2022 makes it much more difficult to challenge slates of state electors, which is expected to significantly reduce tension over that step in the process.
Pursuant to that law, the Electoral Count Reform Act, the vice president, who presides over the vote-certification, has no power to set aside disputed electors. And the threshold is now higher to lodge an objection, with one-fifth of each chamber now needing to support proceeding to a vote.
In the past, the losing side of an election occasionally used the Jan. 6 ceremonies to complain about their candidate’s defeat — with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) in 2017 objecting to the certification of Trump’s win by claiming “10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified.”
Trump encouraged supporters in Congress to challenge his 2020 Electoral College defeat by arguing that officials unlawfully expanded mail-in voting and voter registration deadlines.
He also unsuccessfully pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally return state elector states for further review.
