It wouldn’t matter if he did or not - President Biden could be sworn in by a notary public if he so desired.
I don’t think it really even matters if he’s sworn in at all. That’s pretty must just a ceremonial formality. A new president becomes president at noon on January 20, swearing in or not.
This (ambiguously) happened when Obama was first sworn in. Things were running late, and the swearing-in didn’t happen until an hour or so after noon. But it was noted in various media that, nevertheless, he became president at noon.
To complicate the matter, though, Roberts botched the wording of the oath (which Obama caught in real-time). To clarify that he was really sworn in, Obama and Roberts re-enacted the swearing-in later that evening, in private, just to be sure, for what that was worth.
Please help me with my ignorance (that’s why we’re here, right?)… Since Biden has already won, why do they need to have the electoral college on Dec. 14? Who are those people and what are they going to do–call a different outcome?
They’re also desperately trying to discredit mail-in voting. This is their worst nightmare, easy access to voting for every citizen. I think that’s the real reason they’re sowing chaos. No longer can they make people in certain places wait hours to vote. Mail-in voting is easy.
unless you only have one ballot box to drop ballots off at
The Greg Abbott special 
. I wish us Texans had our own Stacey Abrams. Beto is good, but not quite at her level.
It’s an anachronism. Historically, yes, the electors could “vote their conscience” possibly resulting in a different outcome. (Remember that, historically, people didn’t even get to vote for president. They voted for their state legislators, who appointed electors, who voted for president.)
More recently, the people get to vote for their preferred slate of electors, who were expected to vote for the presidential candidate that they were pre-pledged to vote for, but with the possibility that they could vote otherwise (the “faithless” elector). On the rare occasions when one did, it always stirred up a shit-storm.
States have passed laws attempting to forbid faithless electors, and these laws have been controversial. Thus, even more recently, some of those shit-storms have been tested in court, with the resulting decision that states CAN pass and enforce such laws in various ways. Thus, the faithless electors of 2016 being either fined, jailed, or disqualified and replaced.
With that final (so far) result, it becomes meaningless to have the electors actually meet and vote, and thus meaningless to even have electors. It is now just a historical ritual. The entire process can be handled virtually now. A candidate gets the majority of popular votes, then he automatically gets that many electoral votes, without any actual electors being involved? Why not?
To be clear, Biden has not actually won yet. He’s the projected winner based on the votes we know. But none of the state have even certified their results yet. Then the Electoral College votes and then Congress has to certify those votes.
It’s normally a formality, but nobody actually wins the election for President until the electoral college votes on December 14th and Congress certifies the vote in January.
The election on November 3rd was to determine who those electors should be (i.e. electors pledged to vote for Biden or electors pledged to vote for Trump).
A voter who voted for Biden on November 3rd was actually voting for the electors pledged to vote for Biden (and Harris). Our ballots in Connecticut explicitly said this.
But Biden hasn’t actually won. Yet. Not quite - not officially. That’s why there is a teensy, tiny shred of plausible deniability to all this obstructionism. After all if Trump wins something like 92% of all remaining outstanding PA ballots he might still win the state 
.
What Biden has done is won for all intents and purposes. Basically he is so far ahead there is no plausible way for him to lose by the time the final count comes in. But most of those counts have not yet been fully completed and certified - California might be a month away from finishing. So Biden is President-elect by courtesy, because everyone sane knows he will win. He has won de facto but not yet de jure.
This is my interpretation as well. It’s political theater. Trump is trying to save face, and the GOP is playing along to stay on his good side.
An anonymous GOP source confirmed this in a Washington Post article:
“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” said one senior Republican official. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”
As for the GSA, they claim they are following the precedent established in 2000, when the transition didn’t officially begin until Bush v. Gore was resolved. However, I suspect Emily Murphy sees this as a choice between (a) doing what Trump wants and getting fired on January 20, or (b) defying Trump and getting fired now.
True, but with the caveat that not all States have such laws, so faithless electors are still theoretically possible.
And I wouldn’t say that it “always stirred up a shitstorm”. At least in the recent past, all the faithless electors have been Making A Statement by voting for some member of their party that they liked better than their candidate. I know a couple Clinton electors in 2016 voted for Sanders and I’m pretty sure a couple Trump electors voted for Kasich or someone. But there has never been a case where faithless electors ever came close to actually electing one major party candidate instead of the other.
One comforting thought: Rupert Murdoch and Fox Corporation won’t want a U.S. civil war. Murdoch may hate the Democrats, but he doesn’t want societal collapse — it’s very bad for business.
Fox News may not totally control the monsters they worked so hard to create (DJT and his followers), but they have substantial influence over a lot of low information Trump supporters.
I agree that this is what’s happening, but I think they’re playing with fire. The more that they feed the base’s delusion that Trump was robbed, the more the base will dig in on the idea that Biden is an illegitimate President. Then when Republicans try to turn the corner after Trump’s legal challenges peter out and accept that Biden is President, the base will demand that they refuse to acknowledge him as President. They’ll demand that they boycott his inauguration, refuse to meet or negotiate with him, pursue his impeachment, refuse to vote on any of his nominees, etc. Any Senators who don’t will face fierce primary challenges.
That’s a feature, not a bug. As I said in the Clusterfuck thread:
… this bullshit is the best way to undermine Biden’s presidency before he even takes office. Make sure 49% of the electorate thinks the Biden administration is illegitimate, giving Mitch all the cover he needs to never even give Joe the time of day.
It’s likely that one state has certified their results. Each state has their own deadline for certification and that for Delaware was two days after the election. Whether they’ve actually done it by that date this year, I was not able to determine with a google. It’s not something that attracts a lot of press unless there’s a dispute.
There are also a number of states whose deadline is today: LA, OK, SD, VT, and VA. Two other states, SC and WY have tomorrow as their deadline.
Source:
At last count 71.5M voters cast their ballots for Trump. It wasn’t enough to win but it is a staggering number just the same. It tells every Republican political office holder that there is a customer base of hooked junkies jonesing to mainline more of what Trump has been shooting into their veins for the past 4-5 years. I don’t see how any current or future Republican politician has a chance of winning an election if they refuse to continue to feed their MAGA drug habit. They will simply turn from one dealer to the next for a better and cheaper high. Enter QAnon.
I just hope Joe is up to the task of talking them down off the ledge.
Based on current reporting, and what the right-wing voices are playing in Trump’s ears, this is what appears to be the game plan at this point (for those whose end goal is Trump to remain in power):
(1) File tons of lawsuits, knowing none of them will succeed. Maybe you get one or two all the way to SCOTUS, but that seems doubtful at this point, other than possibly the one about late-arriving PA ballots.
(2a) Try to get state legislatures in PA, GA, AZ (maybe even MI?) to appoint a different slate of electors. This is unlikely. Or possibly get the governor to refuse to certify the vote (also unlikely). Or perhaps both.
(2b) Try to get someone in Congress to object to the reading of the electoral votes from one or all of those states during the counting of the votes before Congress on Jan 6. Recall Pence presides over this session and has some say on what objections will be heard (Gore famously shut down most objections in 2000).
(3) If 2a or 2b succeeds, then either Trump has enough votes (2a) or the election is thrown to the House of Representatives because neither candidate receives 270 votes (2b).
So really it hinges on (2b), and what Pence will allow. One would hope that a quick rejection of all arguments in (1) would be enough to shut this process down, but I’m beginning to doubt it now that it has become clear that DOJ and the majority of GOP congresspersons are not willing to stick their necks out.
Now, a bit more about (2b) and why it ties in with (2a). In a nutshell, the objection only carries if both houses sustain it, as long as the state in question has sent only one set of electoral votes to Congress. So the Senate is not enough for (2b) unless the state in question also sent a second set of electors. Even if the state does send a second set of electoral votes, the one cast in accordance with the “safe harbor” provisions of the Electoral Count Act (which would be the one in line with the certified vote total) is presumed valid unless both chambers agree to use the alternative set. So Trump supporters need at least some form of (2a) to succeed as well for (2b) to be viable.
Anyway, lots of legalese and plenty of stuff only based on tradition and never really tested. You can read more about it here: How to Resolve a Contested Election, Part 2: How Congress Counts the Electoral Votes - Lawfare
Is it really that bad, though? I’m thinking of my “nice” LDS neighbors, who I’m sure voted the straight GOP ticket, but who didn’t post any T**** signs in their yard (they had lots of signs for the Republican down-ticket candidates), my niece who leans Libertarian and said she was voting for T****, because she is convinced Biden will raise her taxes, but whom I’m sure is not sending T**** any $ for his phony lawsuits, and even my in-laws who make a big noise on FB but aren’t about to drive around in a T**** train or write him a check.
Do any of you have a feel for how many of the 71,000,000 are the hard-core MAGA-ots?
Is that what we have to reconcile ourselves to? Whether things are bad enough (“Is it really that bad?”) that Trump enjoys a significant amount of soft support?
Tell me, in what way should I be comforted in that knowledge?