The Republicans chosen as electors for a Trump win in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada met to cast their votes for President Trump while Democrat chosen electors voted for Biden in their respective capitals on Monday.
In Lansing, Michigan more than a dozen Republican legislators met at the state Capitol Building in Lansing on Monday to submit their own electoral votes. But the capitol was closed. The state police would not let them in.
And in Wisconsin a Republican electors vote happened in secret, the state Republican Party issuing only a short statement saying that electors had met “to preserve our role in the electoral process still pending in the courts.”
“We took this procedural vote to preserve any legal claims that may be presented going forward,” said Bernie Comfort, Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign chairman, in a statement put out by the Pennsylvania GOP
In several states, Republicans said they were inspired by the 1960 presidential election.
On the day that the electoral college voted that year, Republican Richard M. Nixon was ahead — but Democratic electors in Hawaii, believing that John F. Kennedy had carried the state, held their own vote for Kennedy. Later, after a recount, the courts and the governor declared that Kennedy had won. So Hawaii officially sent two sets of electors.
When Congress met to count the votes, Kennedy was ahead by a wide margin. With little debate, they counted Hawaii for the Democrat.
This year, Congress will formally open and count the electoral votes on Jan. 6.
