Georgia GOP official urges Trump to respect results of the Electoral College
A Republican official in Georgia urged President Trump on Monday to respect the results of the Electoral College and concede if he did not obtain the required votes. Later in the day, the Electoral College affirmed President-elect Biden's win.
"Our Founding Fathers put the electoral system in place for a reason. The Electoral College votes and they are the ones who decide who the president of the United States will be," Cobb County Republican Party chairman Jason Shepherd told Elaine Quijano, anchor of "Red & Blue" on CBSN.
"At the end of the day it's those electors who will make the decision. If they chose Joe Biden, then Joe Biden is the president, and at that point, it's time for Donald Trump to concede this election," he said.
Mr. Trump has claimed without evidence that there was massive fraud in the November election and has refused to concede. The president and his allies have been unsuccessful in challenging Mr. Biden's victory in the courts.
Trump voters were split in a new CBS News/YouGov poll about whether Trump should concede after the Electoral College vote. The poll found only 18% of Trump voters thought Mr. Biden was the legitimate winner of the November election, but 98% of Trump voters thought Republicans were the legitimate winners of the House and Senate seats they won.
Shepherd encouraged Republican voters to not sit out the January 5 runoff, which determines control of the Senate. Cobb County is home to more than half a million voters. The historically conservative county voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016; Mr. Biden widened the margin in 2020 by winning 56% of the vote.
"The best thing to do if you don't trust the system, is get out and vote. Test the system," he told voters. "If an election is going to be stolen by any kind of voter fraud, it's only going to be an election that is very, very close."
After the Electoral College affirmed Mr. Biden's win, a number of prominent Senate Republicans also acknowledged the race was over. GOP Senator Mike Braun of Indiana said that "today marks a watershed moment where we must put aside politics and respect the constitutional process that determines the winner of our presidential election," and GOP Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said the Electoral College vote "makes clear that Joe Biden is now president-elect."