The governor of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania said Tuesday that Joe Biden has been certified as the winner of the presidential election in the state.
Governor Tom Wolf tweeted that the Pennsylvania Department of State had certified the election results for president and vice president. "As required by federal law, I've signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
Biden’s win denies Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes to President Donald Trump, who has made the state the centerpiece of his unsuccessful legal campaign to overturn the November 3 election results.
The certified results say Biden won 3.46 million votes in the state, while Trump captured 3.38 million and Libertarian Jo Jorgensen 79,000.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes over Hillary Clinton.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said that state elections officials and poll workers are “the true heroes of our democracy” after working “extremely long hours to ensure that every qualified voter’s vote is counted safely and securely.”
A federal judge dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit on Saturday that would have stopped the certification of the election in Pennsylvania, saying the suit lacked evidence and offered only “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.”
On Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots are valid even if a voter did not completely fill out the outer envelope.
