ATLANTA — UPDATE: Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes have been cast for Democrat Joe Biden for president. The state’s Democratic electors met in the state Senate chamber on Monday.
Led by former candidate for governor Stacey Abrams, the electors each marked a paper ballot that was then collected, counted and confirmed by a voice roll call.
“I’m pleased to announce that Joseph R. Biden has received 16 votes for president of the United States,” Abrams said to applause.
The electors, which included several state lawmakers and Democratic activists, were all wearing face masks.
The vote formally seals Biden’s win in Georgia, the battleground state where he beat President Donald Trump by about 12,000 votes.
The Republicans chosen to be electors if Trump won met in a committee room downstairs and cast their votes for Trump, but they are not official.
You can watch a replay of the event here:
ORIGINAL STORY: Presidential electors are meeting at the Georgia State Capitol and across the United States to formally choose Joe Biden as the nation’s next president.
Monday is the day set by law for the meeting of the Electoral College. In reality, electors meet in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to cast their ballots. By law, the 538 electors meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.
In the Peach State, the votes will be cast at the Georgia State Capitol at 12 p.m. You can watch it right here, on the 11Alive app, or on the 11Alive YouTube channel.
The results will be sent to Washington and tallied in a Jan. 6 joint session of Congress over which Vice President Mike Pence will preside.
President-elect Joe Biden will give a speech Monday, likely in the late evening, after the Electoral College vote certification, his transition team announced. He will speak on "the strength and resilience of our democracy," they said.
The electors’ votes have drawn more attention than usual this year because President Donald Trump has refused to concede the election and continued to make baseless allegations of fraud.
It takes 270 electoral votes to win: Biden won 306 electoral votes, and Trump won 232. There have been so-called "faithless electors" -- an elector who does not vote for the candidate for whom he or she pledged to vote for -- in previous elections but not enough to change the outcome.
Biden, as anticipated, will be inaugurated as the nation's 46th president on Jan. 20, 2021.