Washington: With West Virginia certifying its presidential election results, all 50 US states and the District of Columbia have now certified the outcome of the November 3 presidential polls, according to a media report on Thursday. President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat, is projected to win 306 electoral votes, and incumbent President Donald Trump is set to win 232. It takes 270 electoral votes of the 538 available to become president. West Virginia became the final US state to certify its presidential election results on Wednesday, according to CNN's tally. West Virginia formally declared that President Trump, a Republican, is entitled to the state's five electoral votes.
On Monday, the 538-member Electoral College will meet to take forward the election process. The US president is not chosen directly by the voters, but what is known as the Electoral College. In this process, the states elect the President and Vice President. Each US state is allotted a different number of electoral votes, based on how many representatives it has in the House, plus its two senators. While California has the maximum electoral votes with 55, Texas is second with 38 electoral votes. The states' certifications come as Trump, who has not conceded defeat, has baselessly claimed that the election was rigged and sowed doubt about the outcome of one of the most divisive the presidential race. Dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign challenging the results have been dismissed at the state and federal levels across the country since the election.
Though Trump initially did not allow the transition process to start, he finally relented on November 23. The Biden team now have access to additional office space inside the agencies and the ability to use federal resources for background checks on Biden's White House staff appointments and Cabinet picks. Each American state has different processes for certifying results, and some states certified their slate of presidential electors separately from state and local election results, according to the CNN report. The next major step in the Electoral College process is the meeting of the electors, who are required by law to convene on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, which this year is December 14.
The electors' votes are later transmitted to officials and counted in a joint session of Congress on January 6. Biden, a Democrat, is scheduled to be inaugurated as the 46th US President on January 20.
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