As the country moves closer to the inauguration in January, states are already finalizing their counts and certifying the results. Arizona’s results showing Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump has now been certified by its officials.
This week, officials in Arizona have now certified the results showing Biden’s win over Trump by a narrow margin much to the chagrin of the outgoing president and his legal team. Republican Governor Doug Ducey along with Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs have both signed off on the results and vouched for the integrity of the elections in the state. The battleground state that was also heavily-Republican leaning was flipped in Biden’s favor during the elections. Biden would be the second Democrat in 70 years that Arizona has voted for.
“We do elections well here in Arizona. The system is strong,” said Ducey. Ducey also added that the state was able to successfully hold the election through both in-person and mail-in voting in the midst of the pandemic. The final results revealed Biden winning against Trump with a margin of 10,457 votes or 0.3 percent of almost 3.4 million votes cast in the state. By December 14, its electors will be meeting to cast the state’s electoral votes for Biden.
Despite the state’s officials already formalizing the results, Trump’s legal team led by Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis continued to assert their claim of election misconduct in the state. Both have failed to provide evidence to back their claims of fraud. Their pursuit to contest the results in the battleground states that voted for Biden have been largely unsuccessful. Both political parties have refuted Trump and his allies’ claims that there has been no evidence of widespread fraud that occurred in the elections this year.
With the transition already ongoing, Biden is now able to access the President’s Daily Brief that he will be receiving regularly once he takes office in January. The incoming Commander-in-Chief has already seen versions of the PDB before, which is usually tailored to how every president prefers to absorb information. According to expert David Priess, those in charge of briefing Biden will likely be asking him what format he prefers to get in his own brief.