North Dakota casts three electoral votes for President-elect Trump

(Michael Achterling – North Dakota Monitor) – North Dakota completed its 2024 presidential election Tuesday after Republican electors cast the state’s three electoral votes for President-elect Donald Trump.

Republican state Sen. Jeff Magrum and former state lawmakers Kim Koppelman and Rick Becker took the oath of electors, administered by Secretary of State Michael Howe, before signing their names onto six copies of the Electoral College ballots. Howe then stamped the ballots with a state seal before securing them in separate envelopes.

Secretary of State Michael Howe affixes a state seal sticker to an envelope containing one copy of the state’s electoral college votes on Dec. 17, 2024. (Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

Erika White, elections director for the Secretary of State’s Office, said two copies of the electoral votes will be sent to Colleen J. Shogan, United States archivist; one copy is sent to the president of the Senate; one is sent to U.S. District Court Chief Judge for North Dakota Peter Welte; and two copies are kept in Howe’s office for the state’s official records. The electoral votes will be delivered via UPS and verified through tracking numbers before being tallied on Jan. 6, 2025, during a joint session of Congress led by Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in the 2024 election.

Gov. Kelly Armstrong presided over the vote at the Capitol in Bismarck and told the electors that the vote they conducted was important to the country’s democratic process.

Gov. Kelly Armstrong, right, leads the meeting of the state’s presidential electors before they cast their votes for President-elect Donald Trump on Dec. 17, 2024. (Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

“We should always remember the significant amount of people in this world never get to do this. They never get to participate in free and fair elections,” Armstrong said. “While being primarily ceremonial, it’s also hugely, hugely impactful and important.”

All three North Dakota electors said it was their first time as presidential electors.

Each elector received an application for tickets to the presidential inauguration, though travel and lodging to the event would be at the elector’s own expense.

Koppelman said the democratic processes and the Electoral College are more important now than ever before.

“There are people in our country today that would like to do away with it, and I think that would be very dangerous,” Koppelman said.