President-elect Joe Biden officially clinched the Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.
This came after California certified its 2020 presidential election on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
The win in the state brings Biden’s total to 279 Electoral College votes — surpassing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
On Nov. 7, all major news outlets projected Biden to defeat President Donald Trump in the election. Now, with California’s certification, “It is a legal milestone and the first milestone that has that status,” Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley told the Associated Press.
“Everything prior to that was premised on what we call projections,” he said, later adding, “As a practical matter, we know that Joe Biden is going to be inaugurated on Jan. 20.”
California assigned 55 electors to vote for Biden and they will formally vote on Dec. 14. The votes from all of the states will be tallied on Jan. 6 in Congress.
Inauguration Day is set for Jan. 20, 2021.
Trump has yet to concede the election and has pushed unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud in the election. On Friday, his campaign filed a lawsuit in Georgia.
Trump’s former counselor Kellyanne Conway pointed to Biden as the apparent winner of the election on Friday.
“If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail,” Conway said during an interview with The 19th.
She also said, “The president wants to exhaust all of his legal avenues…and that is his right.”
