President-elect Joe Biden says local election officials, workers and volunteers showed courage to help conduct elections during the coronavirus pandemic and later by enduring threats of violence and verbal abuse while ensuring that democracy prevailed in the November election.
In a speech Monday after the Electoral College affirmed his victory, Biden said that the threats were “simply unconscionable."
"While we all wish that our fellow Americans in these positions will always show such courage and commitment to free and fair elections, I hope we never again see anyone subjected to the kind of threats and abuse we saw in this election," Biden said.
He said President Donald Trump’s lawyers brought “dozens and dozens and dozens” of legal challenges of the election results, but each time they were found to be without merit.
Biden says Trump’s team repeatedly made arguments to state legislatures, officials and even the U.S. Supreme Court, “and in every case no cause or evidence was found to reverse or question or dispute the results.”
Biden also noted that Trump called his 2016 tally of 306 electoral votes a “landslide." That's the same amount Biden accumulated in defeating Trump. Biden says if that constituted a clear victory in 2016, he wanted to “respectfully suggest” that Trump now accept Biden's victory this year.
Trump has refused to concede defeat in the presidential vote, making repeated and unproven allegations of widespread fraud.
