US President-elect Joe Biden delivers remarks on the Electoral College vote at the Queen Theatre in Wilmington, Delaware on Dec 14, 2020. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP)

The winner is Joe Biden indeed as the 2020 US election saga finally comes to a close.

The US Electoral College voted on Dec 14 to officially affirm the victory of President-elect Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris. 

The Democrat pair received 306 Electoral College votes — over the threshold of 270 needed to win the presidency — out of 538 votes. US President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence received 232 votes, US media have reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Dec 15 congratulated Biden on his win. In his message, Putin wished Biden “every success”, according to a Kremlin statement. 

Putin expressed confidence that “Russia and the US, which bear special responsibility for global security and stability, can, despite the differences, really contribute to solving many problems and challenges that the world is currently facing.”

Also congratulating Biden were Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, among others. In a Twitter post written in Portuguese, Bolsonaro said he is ready to work with the new administration and continue to “build a Brazil-US alliance” for the benefit of the people.

During a morning press conference, Lopez Obrador said he sent a congratulatory letter to Biden on the night of Dec 14, just hours after the Electoral College result.

Though Trump is yet to concede defeat, the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania — ground zero for many of his fruitless lawsuits — supported Biden and Harris.

The vote by Electoral College put the official seal on Biden’s victory after weeks of efforts by Trump to use legal challenges and political pressure to overturn the results.

The final ceremonial formality is that the electoral votes will be counted at a special joint session of Congress on Jan 6 before Biden and Harris are inaugurated on Jan 20.

Under the US Constitution, voters in the presidential race support not candidates but electors — usually current and former party officials, state lawmakers and party activists — whose votes later in the process are formally what brings about the result of the election, the National Public Radio noted. 

In recent decades, the Electoral College process has been mostly ceremonial and received less attention than the main portion of the election.

“This year’s proceeding, which only occurs every four years, has unfortunately had an artificial shadow cast over it in the form of baseless accusations of misconduct and fraud — for which no proof has been provided and which court after court has dismissed as unfounded,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, was quoted by NPR as saying.

Election experts, including Ohio Northern University’s Robert Alexander, said Trump’s path to overturning the election result is closed, even if the public messaging goes on. 

“I foresee shenanigans. I foresee debate. I foresee some drama,” he said. “But I do not foresee any change in the outcome when all the (electoral) votes are counted.”

US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the upper chamber of Congress, finally congratulated Biden and Harris on Dec 15.

The incoming Biden administration has a historic need and opportunity to restore global cooperation, said former Treasury secretary Henry Paulson. 

An essential step in that process is “stabilizing the US-China relationship,” which has been fraught with stress in a host of areas, including more tariffs, heightened restrictions, revoked visas, fewer student and scholar exchanges, and inflammatory rhetoric.

And keeping the competition healthy is “vitally important” to repair the damaged relations, Paulson said. 

“Until the US and China can establish where they can cooperate and where they will compete, there will be chaos, which limits global economic growth and threatens peace,” Paulson wrote in an op-ed posted Dec 14 on The Wall Street Journal’s website.

Paulson, who had warned that the two countries were heading toward an “economic iron curtain” two years ago, has recently called for policymakers to “get competition with China right”.

At the Bloomberg New Economy Forum on Nov 16, Paulson said: “Competition without unnecessary confrontation should be our goal — because confrontation without effective competition has produced some poor results for the American people.” 

Paulson also appealed to people to reject the notion that the US does not benefit from an economic relationship with China.

“Indeed, our workers and farmers have the potential to benefit to a much greater extent from a more balanced relationship with the world’s fastest-growing major economy,” Paulson wrote.

Xinhua contributed to this story.