Electoral College confirms Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States

It's now officially official: Joe Biden is the next president of the United States. Following a heated election battle, a nail-biting vote tallying, and a plethora of flimsy lawsuits alleging election fraud, the Electoral College on Monday affirmed the 78-year-old's victory in the 2020 presidential election. Members of the Electoral College gathered in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to take part in the constitutionally mandated ritual that took on newfound significance this year. A majority of the 538 presidential electors voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the next president and vice president even as President Donald Trump began bellowing on social media and in front of TV cameras that the election was "stolen" from him.

According to CNN, the voting kicked off shortly after 10 am ET, with Vermont's three electors casting the first votes for Biden. All of the votes went as expected and California's 55 electors put Biden over the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become president shortly after 5 pm ET. The president-elect defeated Trump 306-232 in the Electoral College; the same result projected by media outlets days after the November 3 election. Biden and Harris — the first woman, first Black person, and first Asian American to become vice president-elect — will be sworn in on January 20. Right after the Electoral College votes get counted formally by the Congress next month.

Biden delivered a forceful rebuke to Trump's attacks on the legitimacy of his victory in a speech on Monday night in Delaware, declaring that "the rule of law, our Constitution and the will of the people prevailed" over the president's efforts to undo the results of the election. "The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power, can extinguish that flame," he said.

Cataloging the failures of the Trump campaign and his GOP allies to overturn the election result, Biden called upon the nation "to turn the page, as we've done throughout our history – to unite, to heal." His harshest words were reserved for the president and his Republican allies who backed a baseless Texas lawsuit seeking to undo other states' election results: "This legal maneuver was an effort by elected officials and one group of states to try to get the Supreme Court to wipe out the votes of more than 20 million Americans in other states and to hand the presidency to a candidate who lost the Electoral College, lost the popular vote and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they were trying to reverse. It's a position so extreme, we've never seen it before."

In a roughly 13-minute speech, the Democratic former vice president praised the country’s democratic institutions for prevailing against Trump's attempts to reverse the election outcome, reports Reuters. The President-elect noted that over 81 million votes were cast in favor of himself and Vice President-elect Harris, making it the most in history and 7 million more than what Trump and Vice President Mike Pence received.

He also pointed out that he won by the same electoral vote count that Trump received in 2016 — which the Republicans described as a "landslide" at the time — and said that it was a "clear victory" then and now. "There is urgent work in front of all of us," President-elect Biden said. "Getting the pandemic under control to getting the nation vaccinated against this virus. Delivering immediate economic help so badly needed by so many Americans who are hurting today --  and then building our economy back better than it ever was."