Trump’s challenges failed but there’s still room for drama

Voters voted. States counted the votes. Challenges were heard and rejected. Now it’s up to the Electoral College to make President-elect Joe Biden’s victory completely official.

The time for President Donald Trump’s repeated baseless allegations of fraud is over. States had until a December 8 “safe harbor” deadline to certify their results.

That doesn’t mean the drama has ended. Now, electors and lawmakers follow an archaic timeline set out the Constitution and US law to make Biden president.

Just as then-Vice President Biden oversaw the counting of electoral votes that gave Trump the White House in 2017, now it will be Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s loyal soldier these last four years, who will announce the vote tally that officially makes Biden the winner. Read more about that here.

And Republicans will have to choose how deeply they want to follow Trump into his rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

Lawmakers will have the ability to raise objections about the vote — just like some Democrats did in 2017. But while those objections were dismissed easily in 2017, Republican senators could, if they choose, drag the process out this year, and force the House and Senate to vote on individual points.

The full timeline is below: