Pennsylvania officially certifies Biden as winner of presidential election in state
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — The Pennsylvania governor says Democrat Joe Biden has been certified as the winner of the presidential vote in the state.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf tweeted Tuesday that the Pennsylvania State Department “certified the results of the November 3 election in Pennsylvania for president and vice president of the United States.
As required by federal law, I’ve signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
President Donald Trump lost the state’s 20 electoral votes to Biden.
Trump has made Pennsylvania a centerpiece of his unsuccessful legal attempts to invalidate the election results.
The federal government just a day prior had recognized President-elect Joe Biden as the “apparent winner” of the Nov. 3 election.
That formally started the transition of power after Trump spent weeks testing the boundaries of American democracy.
The move on Monday had come after Trump suffered yet more legal and procedural defeats in his seemingly futile effort to overturn the election with baseless fraud claims.
In recent days, senior Trump aides including chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone had encouraged him to allow the transition to begin, telling the Republican president he didn’t need to concede but could no longer justify withholding support to the Biden transition.
