Electors formally cast Nevada’s 6 votes for Biden

Holding up their ballots to computer cameras, Nevada’s electors on Monday cast the state’s six electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

The meeting, held virtually via Zoom and broadcast over YouTube, was overseen by Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, who administered an oath to the slate of Biden electors.

Part of that oath, her deputy told the electors, is that state law requires them to vote for the person who won the most votes in the election. According to the secretary of state’s office, Biden won Nevada, defeating President Donald Trump 50 percent to 47.7 percent in the Nov. 3 election, a difference of 33,596 votes.

The electors then filled out their ballots for Biden and Harris and held them up to the cameras so Cegavske’s office could tally the vote.

“The certificate of vote is the official record of your vote here today and will be provided to the president of the United States Senate, Vice President Mike Pence; the U.S. Archives; the chief justice of the District Court of Nevada and my office,” Cegavske said.

In total, the procedural meeting lasted less than 20 minutes.

“To say today was an important day would be an understatement. It’s really a special and momentous day for our country and certainly for us here in Nevada,” Biden elector and Democratic state Sen. Yvanna Cancela said after the meeting. “All of our hard work that went into this election has paid off.”

Monday’s vote is what Republicans and the Trump campaign had been trying to prevent for weeks. Republican electors filed a lawsuit in Carson City, claiming fraud and seeking to prevent the Biden electors from casting the state’s votes, but a Carson City judge rejected that action. His ruling was later upheld by the state Supreme Court.

Cancela called the lawsuits a “disgraceful attempt to undermine our democracy.”

“It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that there are still some Republicans who can’t accept that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris overwhelmingly won the election,” she said.

Under Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law, electors meet on the same day to cast electoral votes. States are allocated votes equal to the number of senators and representatives they send to Congress.

Those votes are then sent to Washington, D.C., where they are opened by the vice president in a joint session of Congress, where they are counted and a winner declared. That session is scheduled for Jan. 6.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.