PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania's top elections official certified the state's presidential election results on Tuesday, officially declaring Joe Biden the winner and paving the way for him to receive the state's 20 Electoral College votes next month.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar made the final vote counts official, three weeks after the Nov. 3 election: Biden received 3,458,229 votes, 80,555 more than President Donald Trump's 3,377,674 votes.
Gov. Tom Wolf then signed the Certificate of Ascertainment to name the 20 Biden electors who will meet in Harrisburg on Dec. 14.
"Today's certification is a testament to the incredible efforts of our local and state election officials, who worked tirelessly to ensure Pennsylvania had a free, fair and accurate process that reflects the will of the voters," Wolf said in a statement.
The vote certification is a procedural step that normally goes unnoticed by the general public; by the time the final votes are made official, the winner has been known for weeks. This year, for example, The Associated Press and other news organizations called Pennsylvania for Biden on Saturday, Nov. 7. That made it clear Biden would win a majority in the Electoral College, making him the president-elect.
Still, race calls from news organizations — and declarations of victory or concessions from candidates — are unofficial. It's a matter of norms that candidates and the public accept the unofficial results long before they are certified.
Those norms were shattered this year.
Trump has repeatedly falsely attacked the electoral system, especially in Pennsylvania. ("Bad things happen in Philadelphia," he said in the first presidential debate, targeting the city.) He spent months making accusations of widespread fraud among mail ballots — before a single one had been cast — and raising absurd claims of election rigging. Hours after polls closed, with millions of votes still uncounted, he falsely declared he had won the presidency and had an insurmountable lead in Pennsylvania. He then falsely declared he had won Pennsylvania.
Since then, Trump's attacks on the results of the election have centered on a largely unsuccessful and increasingly desperate legal fight, as well as escalating rhetorical attacks that have undermined public confidence.
That has brought new levels of attention to the generally mundane work of election administration. In downtown Philadelphia, for example, hundreds of people protested, partied, and demonstrated for days outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center as officials quietly, carefully counted mail ballots. A livestream of the city's vote count drew thousands of viewers at a time and was broadcast on national and international news segments.
The certification of votes, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, has similarly drawn unusual levels of public scrutiny.
In Michigan, Republican elections officials in Detroit's Wayne County initially refused to approve of the votes, deadlocking with Democratic officials before reversing course hours later. Trump afterward reportedly called the Republicans directly, prompting them to unsuccessfully try to rescind their votes and block certification. Trump also met with top Republican state lawmakers from Michigan in what Democrats and others feared would lead to an effort to somehow overturn the state's results. Michigan certified its results Monday.
Similar fears have surrounded Pennsylvania's election results.
Fears of some kind of Republican attempted coup have been high since The Atlantic published an article in September saying Republicans have been quietly planning ways to seat electors regardless of the will of the voters.
The Republicans quoted in that article have said their words were taken out of context, and the Republican leader of the state Senate says the electors are chosen by the people, but fears of the state legislature making an end-run around the election results remain.
Those fears were further stoked last week by rumors of a potential White House visit for Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers — former U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican and outspoken Trump critic who resigned his Northeast Pennsylvania seat in 2018, mentioned it on CNN — but spokespeople for Republican legislative leaders said this weekend that no such invitations had been made.
So the secretary's certification of election results, usually a procedural legal step, has taken on outsize political and symbolic importance this year: A key milestone on the path to Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration.
Elections are run at the county level — 67 Pennsylvania counties run 67 simultaneous elections — and counties have certified their results in the last few days, sending them to Boockvar. (In another unusual move, Republican officials in a few Pennsylvania counties voted against certification on Monday, though that didn't stop the process.)
All 67 counties submitted certifications of their presidential votes "late Monday," the Department of State said in its news release Tuesday announcing the statewide certification of results.
The Pennsylvania Department of State then calculated the final results, including aggregating statewide numbers and combining results for legislative races in districts that cross county lines to determine complete totals.
"We are tremendously grateful to all 67 counties who have been working extremely long hours to ensure that every qualified voter's vote is counted safely and securely," Boockvar said in a statement. "The county election officials and the poll workers are the true heroes of our democracy, enabling us to vote in record numbers, amid challenging circumstances, so that every eligible voter's voice could be heard."
And with Boockvar's signature certifying the results, after a year of major state law changes to the electoral system, a torrent of preelection litigation, months of preparation during the pandemic, an endless flood of mis- and disinformation, weeks of abuse and death threats and a whirlwind of post-election legal challenges, Pennsylvania's Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election is now complete.
