On Monday, 538 Americans will convene in state capitols across the country, swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, and cast the most consequential yet utterly anticlimactic votes of the 2020 election.
These are the electors, the members of the Electoral College, who will take one of the final, formal steps in making Joe Biden the 46th president of the United States and ending President Donald Trump’s desperate bid to overturn the results of the November election. These 538 people will mark small pieces of paper and drop them in ballot boxes; once counted, the votes in each state—preordained by the election—will be transmitted to the Senate, and on January 6, Congress will meet to tally the results and declare a winner to be inaugurated two weeks later. Despite Trump’s fervent wishes, the system will work just as it has in the past.
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