12042020 :: Friday finance week in review

A partial digest of what we learned:

With several states certifying their election results in the week ending December 4, including Arizona and Wisconsin — and California with its 55 votes doing so on Friday — Biden has officially accumulated enough pledged electoral votes to become the next president of the United States.

As outlined before, all states must certify their results and resolve any legal challenges and disputes regarding said results by this coming Tuesday. If any issues are left pending, Congress gets involved.

It would appear that six states, evenly split, have yet to certify their results. For Biden, they are Connecticut, Hawaii, and New Jersey; and Missouri, Texas, and West Virginia for Trump.

In the Pennsylvania case pending with SCOTUS, Democrats have now filed briefs in opposition to Republicans’ petition for a writ of certiorari.

Regarding Georgia, the machine recount requested by Trump is done and reaffirms a Biden victory. Hence, Trump’s legal team has filed a lawsuit in a bid to invalidate the results and either get a new statewide election for president or have the state legislature appoint its own electors. Ballotpedia has counted 64 election-related lawsuits to date, not including this one. It seems increasingly bizarre that any of these would amount to overturning the outcome.

Barr, for his part, has publicly stated that the DOJ found no major evidence thus far…