By JILL COLVIN and JONATHAN COOPER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Reed says he will always believe the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. The retired police officer-turned-construction worker believes fraud marred the vote, no matter how many courts rejected that claim. Still, a day after the Electoral College made Joe Biden’s win official, the ardent Trump supporter from the suburbs of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was ready to move on.

“I think it’s pretty much over,” Reed said of Trump’s ongoing quest to overturn the results of the election. ”I trust the Electoral College.”

For weeks, Trump has been on a mission to convince his loyal base that his victory was stolen and the contest was rigged. With help from conservative media, polls show he’s had considerable success. But now that the Electoral College has formalized Biden’s win and Republican officials, including Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, are finally acknowledging Biden as president-elect, many Trump voters across the country seem to be doing the same.

Interviews with voters, along with fresh surveys of Republicans, suggest their unfounded doubts about the integrity of the vote remain. But there is far less consensus on what should be done about it and whether to carry that resentment forward.

For some, like Reed, the Electoral College vote was the clear end of a process. Others have vowed to continue to protest with demonstrations like the one that turned violent in Washington, D.C., over the weekend. And some said they hoped GOP leaders would press for more investigations to put the doubts Trump sowed to rest.

They are people like Scott Adams, a retiree and Trump voter living in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, who said he accepts Biden’s victory — but “with reservations.”

Adams said he’s heard too much discussion about irregularities in the vote count on Fox News Channel and conservative talk radio to trust the election’s outcome and doesn’t feel he’ll ever know the true margin of victory. (Biden won the Electoral College by a vote of 306 to 232.)

But Adams doesn’t think the election was rigged enough to change the outcome, even if he believes it was “rigged enough that it should be questioned more.” He’d like to see more investigations.

Republicans across the country — from local officials to governors to Attorney General William Barr — have said repeatedly there is no evidence mass voter fraud affected the outcome. Trump and his allies brought a flurry of lawsuits, but nearly all have been dismissed by judges. The Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices, denied requests to hear a pair of cases aimed at invalidating the outcome of the election in key battleground states.

Still, coming to terms with this pile of evidence has been difficult for many Trump voters. They expressed disbelief that Trump could have lost, given the huge crowds he drew to his rallies. Some said their suspicions were heightened by the mainstream media’s reluctance to air Trump’s baseless claims. And they repeatedly pointed to the slower-than-usual vote count as evidence something had gone awry.

“Something’s not right here,” said Reed, who lives in East Lampeter Township.

The explanation is well known — in many states, an influx of mail-in ballots, overwhelmingly cast by Democrats, were tallied later than ballots cast in person. Still, Reed said he thought the courts should have spent more time investigating.

“I’ll always believe that it was stolen from him. I’ll really never be able to have peace of mind that it wasn’t,” he said.

Others were less willing to go along.

“I don’t trust that result. I think that the election was a fraud. I think the election was stolen. I don’t know how anybody could not think that. All you have to do is look at the results,” said Katherine Negrete, 55, a teacher living in Peoria, Arizona.

Negrete is among those who holds out hope that Trump can win if the Supreme Court intervenes (there is no indication that will happen) or Congress chooses to accept an “alternative slate” of Trump electors from several states. Election experts have said that scheme has no legal pathway and Republican Senate leaders have discouraged it.

Still, Negrete said, “hopefully Congress will do the right thing” and she expressed frustration with dwindling options.

“I don’t know what we can do about that. If we don’t have the courts that stand up for us,” she said. “If we don’t have an attorney general that will stand up and say, ‘This was wrong and we need to investigate it.’ What are we supposed to do? Do we need to fight brother against brother? It’s crazy.”

Biden has vowed to bring Americans together and work across the aisle. His success on both fronts may depend on how many Republicans hold on to their election grievances. A Quinnipiac University poll from earlier this month found that 38% of registered voters, including 77% of Republicans, said they believe there was widespread fraud in the presidential election.

And a recent Fox News poll found 36% of voters, including 77% of Trump voters, believe the election was stolen from Trump. However, the same poll also found that about 8 in 10 voters overall, and about half of Trump voters, said they will at least give Biden a chance as president.

Matt Vereline, 52, a member of the pro-Trump group “Long Island Loud Majority” is not in the mood for reconciliation.

Vereline, who lives in Bohemia, New York, is convinced “there was a lot more voter fraud than we know about,” though he’s not sure whether it changed the outcome. But that won’t keep him from rallying around what he thinks was an injustice. After all, that’s what Democrats did to Trump, he says.

“Did they not cry for four years about Russian collusion, which wasn’t proven? So now I’m going to to cry about voter fraud for four years,” he said. “They didn’t accept it. Why should I accept Biden? I know I can’t do nothing about it. I know a rally is not going to change the course of who gets elected president. It’s whatever will be will be. But if my friends want to get together and complain about it in a peaceful way and voice our opinions, I’m going.”

Others believe Biden won fair and square. Steve Volkman, a Republican who works in construction in Mesa, Arizona, said he made peace with Trump’s loss weeks ago.

“I voted for Trump, but people gotta get over it,” Volkman said, while leaning against his pickup truck. “For sure, he (Biden) won the majority vote — landslide. To me, it’s already over.”

Catherine Templeton, a South Carolina Republican who served in former Gov. Nikki Haley’s administration, said that, despite the level of support for Trump in red states like her own, she felt sure voters would be willing to accept Biden as president.

“Obviously, South Carolina supports President Trump, but I think you’ll see when Republicans don’t get their way, they move on,” said Templeton, who lives in Charleston. “It’s time to move on.”

It remains to be seen, for now, how lingering concerns over the integrity of the vote will affect turnout in future elections. Both parties have been focused on Georgia, where a pair of runoff elections will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Denise Adams, 50, said she has her doubts about “questionable activity” in the general election. But she turned out to vote early on Monday in Kennesaw, a suburb northwest of Atlanta.

“I don’t want to lose our freedoms,” she said, repeating misleading GOP claims that the Democrats would usher in “socialism.” “We’re losing our rights and freedoms in our country.”

“I’ve never had a problem before now trusting it, but now I feel like there may be something going on that I don’t trust,” echoed Melissa McJunkin, 40, who remains concerned about the integrity of her vote after hearing stories of voter fraud in the general election, but turned out anyway.

“I think it’s important for what’s going to happen next,” she said.

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Cooper reported from Mesa, Arizona. Associated Press writers Emily Swanson in Washington, Nicholas Riccardi in Atlanta, Sophia Tulp in Rome, Georgia, and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

By LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell congratulated Democrat Joe Biden as president-elect on Tuesday, saying the Electoral College “has spoken.”

The Republican leader’s statement, delivered in a speech on the Senate floor, ends weeks of silence over President Donald Trump’s defeat. It came a day after electors met and officially affirmed Biden’s election win.

“I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden,” McConnell said.

“Many of us had hoped the presidential election would yield a different result,” he said. “But our system of government has the processes to determine who will be sworn in on Jan. 20. The Electoral College has spoken.”

McConnell called Biden someone “who has devoted himself to public service for many years.” He also congratulated Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, saying “all Americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice president-elect for the very first time.”

McConnell prefaced his remarks with sweeping praise for what he characterized as Trump’s “endless” accomplishments during four years in office. He said Trump and Vice President Mike Pence “deserve our thanks.”

The Senate leader cited Trump’s nomination and ensuing Senate confirmation of three Supreme Court justices, among other accomplishments.

McConnell’s remarks follow a groundswell of leading Republicans who said Monday for the first time that Biden is the winner of the presidential election, essentially abandoning President Donald Trump’s assault on the outcome after the Electoral College certified the vote.

For his part, Trump continued to push his baseless claims of “voter fraud” in a new tweet on Tuesday.

With states affirming the results, the Republicans faced a pivotal choice — to declare Biden the president-elect, as the tally showed, or keep standing silently by as Trump waged a potentially damaging campaign to overturn the election.

“At some point you have to face the music,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the NO. 2 GOP leader. “Once the Electoral College settles the issue today, it’s time for everybody to move on.”

Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the chairman of the inaugural committee, said the panel will now “deal with Vice President Biden as the president-elect.”

Just last week, the Republicans on the inauguration committee had declined to publicly do so. He said Monday’s Electoral College vote “was significant.”

The turnaround comes nearly six weeks after Election Day. Many Republicans rode out the time in silence, enabling Trump to wage an unprecedented challenge to the nation’s cherished system of voting.

Some GOP lawmakers have vowed to carry the fight to Jan. 6 when Congress votes to accept or reject the Electoral College results. Others have said Trump’s legal battles should continue toward resolution by inauguration day, Jan. 20.

“It’s a very, very narrow path for the president,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a top Trump ally. “But having said that, I think we’ll let those legal challenges play out.”

Historians and election officials have warned that Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud threaten to erode Americans’ faith in the election system, and that lawmakers have a responsibility under the oath of office to defend the Constitution.

“The campaign to overturn the outcome is a dangerous thing,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public policy at Princeton.

“This is a Republican operation, not a presidential operation,” Zelizer said. “Without their silence, he couldn’t do what he is doing.”

Trump is trying to throw out the ballots of thousands of Americans, particularly those who voted by mail, in dozens of lawsuits that have mostly failed. His legal team is claiming irregularities, even though Attorney General William Barr, who abruptly resigned Monday, has said there is no evidence of widespread fraud that would alter the election results. State election officials, including Republicans, have said the election was fair and valid.

In a decisive blow to Trump’s legal efforts, the Supreme Court last week declined to take up two of his cases challenging the election process in key states. Some 120 House Republicans signed on to that failed Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to take up the case seeking to throw out election results in the swing-states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who volunteered to argue the case before the Supreme Court, was holding a telephone town hall Monday urging “participation in the fight to defend the integrity” of the election.

One House Republican, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, has vowed to challenge the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, when Congress convenes a joint session to receive the outcome.

At that time, any challenge in Congress would need to be raised by at least one member of the House and Senate. It’s unclear if any GOP senator will join in making the case. It appears highly unlikely there is enough congressional support to overturn the election.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that it’s as if Biden has to win “again and again and again” before Republicans will accept it.

Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., introduced a resolution in Congress last week suggesting no one be declared president-elect until all investigations are completed. He proposed it after constituents confronted him last month demanding he do more to support Trump.

Overhanging their calculations is the Georgia runoff elections Jan. 5 that will decide control of the Senate. Incumbent GOP senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler need Trump’s support to defend their seats against Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rafael Warnock.

By LAURAN NEERGAARD

AP NEWS – The biggest vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off Monday as health workers rolled up their sleeves for shots to protect them from COVID-19 and start beating back the pandemic — a day of optimism even as the nation’s death toll closed in on 300,000.

“I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay said after getting a shot in the arm at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York.

With a countdown of “three, two, one,” workers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center gave the first injections to applause.

And in New Orleans, Steven Lee, an intensive care unit pharmacist at Ochsner Medical Center, summed up the moment as he got his own vaccination: “We can finally prevent the disease as opposed to treating it.”

Other hospitals around the country, from Rhode Island to Texas, unloaded precious frozen vials of vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech, with staggered deliveries set throughout Monday and Tuesday. Several other countries also have authorized the vaccine, including Britain, which started vaccinating people last week.

For health care workers, who along with nursing home residents will be first in line for vaccination, hope is tempered by grief and the sheer exhaustion of months spent battling a coronavirus that still is surging in the U.S. and around the world.

“This is mile 24 of a marathon. People are fatigued. But we also recognize that this end is in sight,” said Dr. Chris Dale of Swedish Health Services in Seattle.

Packed in dry ice to stay at ultra-frozen temperatures, the first of nearly 3 million doses being shipped are a down payment on the amount needed. More of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will arrive each week. And later this week, the FDA will decide whether to green-light the world’s second rigorously studied COVID-19 vaccine, made by Moderna Inc.

While the U.S. hopes for enough of both vaccines together to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of the month, there won’t be enough for the average person to get a shot until spring.

“This is the light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a long tunnel,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

Now the hurdle is to rapidly get vaccine into the arms of millions, not just doctors and nurses but other at-risk health workers such as janitors and food handlers — and then deliver a second dose three weeks later.

“We’re also in the middle of a surge, and it’s the holidays, and our health care workers have been working at an extraordinary pace,” said Sue Mashni, chief pharmacy officer at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City.

Plus, the shots can cause temporary fever, fatigue and aches as they rev up people’s immune systems, forcing hospitals to stagger employee vaccinations.

A wary public will be watching closely to see whether health workers embrace vaccinations. Just half of Americans say they want to get vaccinated, while about a quarter don’t and the rest are unsure, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Health Research.

The FDA, considered the world’s strictest medical regulator, said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was developed at breakneck speed less than a year after the virus was identified, appears safe and strongly protective, and it laid out the data in a daylong public meeting last week for scientists and consumers alike to see.

“Please, people, when you look back in a year and you say to yourself, ‘Did I do the right thing?’ I hope you’ll be able to say, ‘Yes, because I looked at the evidence,’” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “People are dying right now. How could you possibly say, ‘Let’s wait and see’?”

Still, in winning approval for widespread emergency use, the vaccine was cleared before a final study in nearly 44,000 people is complete. That research is continuing to try to answer additional questions.

For example, while the vaccine is effective at preventing COVID-19 illness, it is not yet clear if it will stop the symptomless spread that accounts for half of all cases.

The shots still must be studied in children and during pregnancy. But the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said Sunday that vaccination should not be withheld from pregnant women who otherwise would qualify.

Also, regulators in Britain are investigating a few severe allergic reactions. The FDA’s instructions tell providers not to give it to those with a known history of severe allergic reactions to any of its ingredients.

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AP journalists Marion Renault, Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Tamara Lush and Kathy Young contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.