Georgia’s electors cast votes for Trump in state Capitol

Georgia’s Republican presidential electors formally cast their votes for former President Donald Trump Tuesday in a ceremony at the state Capitol.

The 16 electors, consistently largely of local GOP leaders, met on the same day electors in every state cast their votes either for Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, depending on which candidate the majority of voters in their state supported on Election Day last month.

Trump received 312 electoral votes – well above the 270 needed to win the election – to 226 for Democrat Harris. The former president carried Georgia by more than 115,000 votes.

Democrats have complained in recent years about the Electoral College, which was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution by the nation’s founders.

Democrat Hillary Clinton won more popular votes than Trump in 2016 but lost to Trump in the Electoral College. The same thing happened to Democrat Al Gore in 2000, when he won the popular vote but lost to Republican George W. Bush.

But Georgia Republican Chairman Josh McKoon, who served as an elector and chaired Tuesday’s meeting, defended the Electoral College as a wise decision by the founders.

“They didn’t want the most populous state in the nation picking the president,” McKoon said. “That’s why every state is able to participate in the Electoral College.”

McKoon said he was gratified that Tuesday’s meeting ran “like clockwork” in contrast to four years ago, when Republicans fielded an alternate slate of electors that met at the Capitol to vote for Trump, even though Democrat Joe Biden had won the popular vote in Georgia. The real electors – all Democrats – met on the same day inside the state Senate chambers to vote for Biden.

On Tuesday, McKoon said the Republican group met on the advice of lawyers who said the alternate slate of electors was necessary to preserve Trump’s legal options to challenge the results of the 2020 election. Those challenges were later dismissed in a variety of courts.

Congress will meet on Jan. 6 to count the electoral votes from across the nation. Trump will take the oath of office Jan. 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.