The long, strange trip to Electoral College vote
Wisconsin’s 10 electors will make it official today
After all the voting, all the lawsuits and all the acrimony ignited by a frenetic presidential race and President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to concede, Wisconsin’s 10 electors will make it official Monday.
President-elect Joe Biden won the state of Wisconsin and the White House.
It surely has been a long, strange trip to the Electoral College vote.
The 538 electors from 50 states and Washington, D.C., will meet in separate locations across the country and confirm Biden’s victory.
In Wisconsin, that means the 10 electors will gather at the state Capitol at noon.
They’ll cast their votes for president and vice president and sign six certificates with the results, with one copy going to Washington, D.C.
And on Jan. 6, all the Electoral College votes will be tallied during a special session in Congress, presided over by Vice President Mike Pence.
Biden won the popular vote and gathered 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will take office Jan. 20.
It all may sound routine, the traditional peaceful transition of power.
But in 2020, hardly anything has gone to form.
When the electors meet in Madison, they’ll be wearing masks and adhering to social distancing as the state and country continue to be in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic.
The public can view the proceedings on Wisconsin Eye, https://wiseye.org/ live/.
The 10 electors are Democratic stalwarts, including Gov. Tony Evers, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and state party Chair Ben Wikler.
“What is normally a finality is instead a historic moment,” Wikler said.
Wikler added, “It actually matters this year. In a year when the nuts and bolts of our democracy have been under attack, this is a demonstration that the will of the people determines the ruler of the land.”
Khary Penebaker, one of the electors, said Monday’s activity is “going to be pretty short and sweet.”
“It’s something I can’t wait to do but I will be glad when it’s over,” he said. “People are going to look back at this administration and this year and look at how America both failed and survived.”
Penebaker, a member of the Democratic National Committee who ran and lost against U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner in 2016, is excited to be an elector.
“In my case, it has added significance independent of the antics of Trump and his enablers and sycophants,” Penebaker said.
“We’re going to have America’s first black female vice president. Being a man of color that means the world to me.”
Penebaker said he also has a bond with Biden. Penebaker lost his mother to suicide and said he has had “private, personal interactions” with Biden, who has also suffered great personal loss with the deaths of his first wife, a daughter and a son.
“He understands tragedy and empathy,” Penebaker said. “We desperately need normalcy back in our government and our world.”
State Rep. Shelia Stubbs of Madison, who was the first African American elected to the Legislature from Madison, is also struck by the historic achievement of Harris and eager to cast the electoral vote. “I don’t know what my emotion will be on Monday,” Stubbs said. “When Harris accepted the vicepresidential nomination I was crying. I had my 10-year-old daughter next to me and said, ‘this is what you can do.’ “
Through the post-election legal tumult, Stubbs remained steadfast that Biden was the winner, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, even as Trump and his allies challenged the results.
Biden won in Wisconsin by around 21,000 votes and the final cases began falling away Friday night as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to let Texas challenge results in Wisconsin and three other battleground states.
“I always believed that the people of Wisconsin had spoken,” Stubbs said. “We know that Joe Biden has clearly and resoundingly had that victory for the state of Wisconsin.”
State Sen. Patty Schachtner, the chief medical examiner for St. Croix County in western Wisconsin, doesn’t expect a lot of “pomp and circumstance” when she and others cast their votes.
“It is just such an honor for me to be able to follow through and do what the voters of Wisconsin voted for and that is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won,”
Biden won in Wisconsin by around 21,000 votes and the final cases began falling away Friday night as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to let Texas challenge results in Wisconsin and three other battleground states.
she said.
“I’m excited to be part of that process and watch how it happens,” she added. “All of those days in civics class in high school and finally seeing how this process works is going to be really fun.”
But it may also be a little bittersweet for Schachtner, who lost in the fall election.
“I will come in, vote, clean out my office and drive home,” she said.