Pa. electors cast votes today

Meeting in Harrisburg to certify Biden’s victory

After more than a month of the incumbent president questioning their duty as a sizable chunk of the electorate believed the Republican’s false claims, Pennsylvania’s presidential electors will meet on Monday to formally certify Democrat Joe Biden’s win.

The 20 electors — bound to deliver the battleground state for Mr. Biden and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris — will gather in Harrisburg to fulfill their constitutional duty, officially bookending a period of uncertainty in which the election’s loser, President Donald Trump, made numerous failed attempts to overturn the results in court.

In interviews with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the lead-up to the meeting, some of the electors, who represent a cross-section of Democratic Party officials and stakeholders chosen by Mr. Biden’s campaign, said their sense of duty feels even more urgent given Mr. Trump’s challenges to the outcome.

“I think it’s even more critical today that we electors stand up and not back down, and change this government,” said Chester County Commissioner Marian

Moskowitz, an elector who said that even though it was a “frightening experience” to watch Republicans coalesce around the president’s efforts, she now is “more determined than ever” that her vote in the Electoral College is important.

The U.S. Constitution gives the electors the power to choose the president, and when all the votes are counted Monday, Mr. Biden is expected to have 306 electoral votes, more than the 270 needed to elect a president, to 232 votes for

Mr. Trump.

The Electoral College doesn’t meet in one place. Instead, each state’s electors and the electors for the District of Columbia meet in a place chosen by their legislature, usually the state capitol.

With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, states award all of their electoral college votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state.

Once the electoral votes are cast, they are sent to Congress, where both houses will convene on Jan. 6 for a session presided over by Vice President Mike Pence. The envelopes from each state and the District of Columbia will be opened and the votes tallied.

To Ms. Moskowitz, the experience will be overwhelming — “in a good way,” she said.

“I feel like this is the most important thing that I will probably do in my lifetime that affects a change in a major way,” she said.

But for some, the road to get here wasn’t always worry-free. In the weeks following the Nov. 3 election, Mr. Trump waged an unprecedented legal war that sought to, in many cases, void the results in key battleground states.

Though the president was consistently rejected by courts, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 34% of registered voters believe that Mr. Biden’s victory was not legitimate. That belief was bolstered mostly by Republicans, 77% of whom believe that there was widespread voter fraud, of which Mr. Trump’s legal team provided no evidence.

Few electors expressed having serious concerns — at any point — about the legal fate of Mr. Trump’s longshot challenges.

“You have to have some level of anxiety — not very high, because I know we have very competent people on our side and we have the truth on our side,” said elector Nina Ahmad, a candidate for auditor general who lost to Republican Tim DeFoor on Nov. 3.

The vote in Harrisburg on Monday will mean “we’ve secured our democracy,” state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia, another elector, said.

The legislator accused the president of not respecting democracy — citing the many lawsuits disputing an election he lost.

Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairwoman

Nancy Patton Mills said she never felt for a moment that Monday’s vote was in doubt of happening. She said the state had a “fair election.”

“Even though I’m not [a lawyer], I have enough people around me to give me advice and tell me when to worry,” Ms. Mills said. “Nobody said to me, ‘This is the time that you should start to worry.’”

With all that behind her, Ms. Mills will serve as elector for the first time in her career. The chair of Allegheny County’s Democratic Party in 2016, she said she knew what the Democrats had to change before 2020 — and it ended in victory for Mr. Biden, a Scranton native.

Ms. Mills said the opportunity Monday makes her think of her mother, who started the Democratic Party in Moon when she was 16, and on the year women got the right to vote in 1920.

Ms. Ahmad said she is humbled and honored to be a part of Monday’s events, as someone with an “improbable journey” as an immigrant who built a life and raised a family here. She described the vote as the “beauty of this country.”

“With all the craziness, the fact we had four years of

Trump and now we’re resetting and putting us back on the right track is again a testament to the strength of democracy in this country, and

I deeply appreciate that,” Ms. Ahmad said.

“But we have to fight for it,” she added. “We can’t take it for granted.”