Biden Urges To ‘Turn the Page’ After Electoral College Victory

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Monday night urged the nation to "turn the page" to unite and heal after the Electoral College vote made his victory official.

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The electors cast 306 votes for Biden and 232 for Donald Trump based on the 2020 election results in their respective states. To clinch the White House, a candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes of the 538 in total.

"I will be a president for all Americans," Biden said in his address, listing his urgent work ahead, including getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control and the nation vaccinated, delivering immediate economic help, building the U.S. economy back better, and fighting the climate change.

The United States on Monday "passed a grim milestone" with 300,000 coronavirus deaths, Biden lamented, noting that tens of thousands of Americans "in this dark winter of the pandemic" are about to spend Christmas and the new year with a black hole in their hearts.

Biden also slammed Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, calling the legal maneuver by Trump and his allies "so extreme we've never seen it before."

"Thankfully, a unanimous Supreme Court immediately and completely rejected this effort," Biden said, adding that he won more than 81 million popular votes, the most in the U.S. history and about 7 million more than Trump received.

The results of the Electoral College vote will be certified and sent to Congress, the National Archives, and the courts. Congress will certify the results on Jan. 6 as the next step in the presidential transition process.

Despite Electoral College vote, Trump and his allies have signaled that they will continue their efforts to overturn the election results.

Earlier on Monday, in the midst of the Electoral College voting across the country, Trump again claimed there was "massive fraud" in the election. 

Electors in key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona, where Trump had hotly contested but failed, voted with no surprises or defections on Monday.

Moments after Biden surpassed 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House with 55 votes from California, Trump tweeted that Attorney General Bill Barr will step down before Christmas, a move seen as partly an attempt to divert attention from the results of the Electoral College vote.

Earlier this month, Barr revealed that the Justice Department had not found evidence of widespread election fraud that would alter the election results, which represented a public contradiction of Trump's election fraud claims.