WASHINGTON: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden took a narrow lead over President Donald Trump in the battleground states of Georgia and Pennsylvania on Friday, edging closer to winning the White House in a nail-biting contest as a handful of undecided states continue to count votes.
Biden has a 253 to 214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote that determines the winner, according to most major television networks. Winning Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes would put the former vice president over the 270 he needs to secure the presidency, while taking just Georgia's 16 electoral votes would put him on the cusp of victory.
In Pennsylvania, Biden moved ahead of Trump by 5,500 votes on Friday morning, while in Georgia, he had opened up a 1,097-vote lead.
Biden, 77, would become the next president by winning Pennsylvania, or by winning two out of the trio of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Trump's likeliest path appears narrower - he needs to hang onto both Pennsylvania and Georgia and also to overtake Biden in either Nevada or Arizona.
Biden moved ahead of Trump by 1,097 votes in Georgia, where counting continued early on Friday.
The shift in Georgia came hours after Trump appeared at the White House to falsely claim the election was being "stolen" from him. His campaign is pursuing a series of lawsuits across battleground states that legal experts described as unlikely to succeed in altering the election outcome.
Trump's lead had steadily diminished in Georgia, a Southern state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since Bill Clinton took the White House in 1992, as officials worked through tens of thousands of uncounted votes, many from Democratic strongholds such as Atlanta.
The Georgia secretary of state reported late on Thursday there were about 14,000 ballots still to count in the state.
The state also will have to sift through votes from military personnel and overseas residents as well as provisional ballots cast on Election Day by voters who had problems with their registration or identification.
Biden has been steadily chipping away at the Republican incumbent's lead in Pennsylvania as well. His deficit there had been as high as 678,000 votes early on Wednesday.
Biden also maintained slim advantages in Arizona and Nevada. In Arizona, his lead narrowed to about 47,000 votes, and in Nevada he was ahead by about 11,500.
As the country held its breath for a result in the White House race, Georgia and Pennsylvania officials expressed optimism they would finish counting on Friday, while Arizona and Nevada were still expected to take days to complete their vote totals.
TRUMP'S DIMINISHING LEADS
Trump, 74, has sought to portray as fraudulent the slow counting of mail-in ballots, which surged in popularity due to fears of exposure to the coronavirus through in-person voting. As counts from those ballots have been tallied, they have eroded the initial strong leads the president had in states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.
States have historically taken time after Election Day to tally all votes.
The close election has underscored the nation's deep political divides, and if he wins Biden will likely face a difficult task governing in a deeply polarized Washington.
Republicans could keep control of the US Senate pending the outcome of four undecided Senate races, including two in Georgia, and they would likely block large parts of his legislative agenda, including expanding healthcare and fighting climate change.
The winner will have to tackle a pandemic that has killed more than 234,000 people in the United States and left millions more out of work, even as the country still grapples with the aftermath of months of unrest over race relations and police brutality.
Trump fired off several tweets in the early morning hours on Friday, and repeated some of the complaints he aired earlier at the White House. "I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST," he said on Twitter, without offering any evidence that any illegal votes have been cast.
Twitter flagged the post as possibly misleading, something it has done to numerous posts by Trump since Election Day.
In an extraordinary assault on the democratic process, Trump appeared in the White House briefing room on Thursday evening and baselessly alleged the election was being "stolen" from him.
Offering no evidence, Trump lambasted election workers and sharply criticized polling before the election that he said was designed to suppress the vote because it favored Biden.
Trump's campaign, meanwhile, has filed lawsuits in several states, though judges in Georgia and Michigan quickly rejected challenges there. Biden campaign senior legal adviser Bob Bauer called them part of a "broader misinformation campaign."
'RIG AN ELECTION'
"They're trying to rig an election, and we can't let that happen," said Trump, who spoke in the White House briefing room but took no questions. Several TV networks cut away during his remarks, with anchors saying they needed to correct his statements.
Biden, who earlier in the day urged patience as votes were counted, responded on Twitter: "No one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever."
Trump supporters, some carrying guns, ramped up their demonstrations against the process on Thursday night. In Arizona, Trump and Biden supporters briefly scuffled outside the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix.
In Philadelphia, police said they arrested one man and seized a weapon as part of an investigation into a purported plot to attack the city's Pennsylvania Convention Center, where votes were being counted.
SACRAMENTO: Democrats spent $50 million trying to win control of state legislatures in 2020, but the effort mostly failed, cementing regional power in their more conservative Republican opponents over such issues as abortion, education and criminal justice.
The losses also mean that in most of the 29 states with Republican-controlled legislatures, Democrats will not have a say in how Congressional districts are drawn when the once-a-decade process kicks off in 2021. That will make it more difficult for voters in more liberal areas of those states to elect their party's candidates to both the House of Representatives and statehouses for another 10 years.
"There needs to be a reckoning for Democrats, because we are losing these down-ballot races," said a Texas Democratic strategist who requested anonymity in order to speak frankly.
The Democrats' stagnation at the state level came despite massive turnout that flipped at least two states' choices for president from Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden, as vote-counting continued in several states before a presidential winner could be declared.
In Texas, party officials plan a post-mortem to determine what went wrong, said the strategist, who is familiar with the thinking of party leaders.
"The Biden brand didn't help us down-ballot," he said.
Biden lost to Trump in Texas, and the legislature stayed firmly in Republican hands despite years of demographic change benefitting Democrats.
TARGETED EIGHT STATEHOUSES
Democrats had targeted eight statehouses across the country. But with the possible exception of Arizona, where ballots were still being counted on Thursday, they failed to make inroads.
In Georgia, where a razor-thin margin separated Biden and Trump, Democrats were poised to pick up a couple of seats but not enough to gain a majority. In North Carolina, Democrats lost a few seats and Republicans held on to their majority.
Dave Abrams, who helped manage the Republicans' state-level efforts, said the mistake Democrats made was having candidates run on national issues, including healthcare, the coronavirus and President Donald Trump.
"The reality is that people vote on local issues, especially at the state level," said Abrams, who is deputy executive director of the Republican State Leadership Committee.
The 2020 elections are unlikely to alter the parties' representational balance in US state houses, where Republicans began with 52% of 7,383 state legislative seats, said Ben Williams, a policy specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Since the Republican sweep of 2010 when the party picked up 20 legislative chambers, Democrats have taken back control of 17 of them, including some, such as the New Hampshire State House, that have swung back and forth, he said.
A major reason for Democrats' struggle to make inroads is partisan gerrymandering that has cemented Republican majorities in states including Texas and Georgia where demographic change appears to favor Democrats but districts are drawn to favor Republicans, said Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
He cited Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin as states where most districts are drawn so favorably to Republicans it would take a particularly large change in local sentiment or demographics to elect Democrats.
In Texas, he said, districts are generally drawn in a way that favors the incumbent, whether Democrat or Republican, which has the effect of cementing Republican control.
'TRUMP ONLY REPUBLICANS'
Jessica Post, who headed the Democrats' state-level coordinating efforts, said an influx of Trump loyalists at the polls and Republican-drawn district maps in many states made it difficult for the party to gain ground.
"They were really drawn with strategic data to make sure that we could not flip these state legislative chambers," said Post, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC).
While the post-election data is still incomplete, Post also suspects the high turnout sparked by the presidential election brought in a wave of "Trump-only Republicans" whose party-line votes helped Republicans near the bottom of the ballots.
In addition to turnout and favorable district boundaries, many local representatives were re-elected because of the very nature of local politics - voters tend to like and keep their representatives even when they vote for someone of a different party at the presidential level, said political scientist Charles Bullock, a professor at the University of Georgia.
In addition, he said, Republicans in Georgia in 2020 had a better ground game than Democrats, encouraging supporters to go to the polls for local candidates as well as Trump.
" They were out door-knocking and doing the traditional things where the Democrats were hesitant to do so because of the coronavirus," Bullock said.
Republican attacks on Democrats as "socialist" or anti-police may have had an impact on some voters as well, particularly in rural areas, although such messages were probably less effective in urban and suburban neighborhoods, he said.
PHOENIX/PHILADELPHIA: Backers of President Donald Trump, some carrying guns, ramped up demonstrations on Thursday night against what he has baselessly called a rigged election, in battleground states where votes were still being counted.
The demonstrations were largely peaceful, although Trump supporters occasionally shouted with counterprotesters. Trump says the election is being stolen but there has been no evidence of fraud.
In Arizona, one of the closely contested states in the too-close-to-call race between Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Trump and Biden supporters briefly scuffled outside the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix.
Several heavily armed right-wing groups assembled on the site as election workers counted votes inside, but the protests remained mostly peaceful despite mounting tension.
Local election officials continued to tabulate ballots across the country, in some cases processing an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots that accumulated as a preferred voting option during the coronavirus pandemic.
In Philadelphia, police said they arrested one man and seized a weapon as part of an investigation into a purported plot to attack the city's Pennsylvania Convention Center, where votes were being counted.
But otherwise the scene in Philadelphia was less confrontational - festive, even - where pro-Trump and pro-Biden demonstrators were separated by waist-high portable barriers under a strong police presence.
With the future of the presidency in the balance, restive encounters also unfolded in New York and Washington as well as swing-state cities such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Las Vegas, Nevada; Detroit, Michigan; and Atlanta, Georgia.
On the internet, Facebook removed a fast-growing group in which Trump supporters posted violent rhetoric, as it and other social media companies tackled baseless claims and potential violence.
Trump supporters took their queue from the president, who has repeatedly and falsely claimed that mail-in votes are especially prone to fraud.
In Phoenix, Trump supporters briefly chased a man who held up a sign depicting the president as a Nazi pig behind a stage where right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was speaking.
Police intervened and broke up the altercation after the man and his small group of counterdemonstrators were surrounded by Trump activists.
"They are trying to steal the election but America knows what happened and it's fighting back," Jones told the throng of some 300 people.
PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM
As mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania cut into Trump's lead, Philadelphia demonstrators danced. Two people wearing postal box costumes bounced to pulsating music while carrying a banner that read, "The battle isn't over." Others, backed by a live drum corps, marched behind the sign, "Union members fight to count every vote."
Trump activists waved flags and carried signs saying, "Vote stops on Election Day," and "Sorry, polls are closed."
"I think voter fraud is systemic. I didn't work five and a half years (for Trump) to sit home now," said Chris Cox of Bikers for Trump.
In Milwaukee, some 50 Trump supporters gathered for a "Stop the Steal" rally in front of a city building where votes were being counted, blasting country music, waving flags and carrying signs reading "Recount" and "Rigged".
At least one man had a gun in holster.
Roughly a dozen counterprotesters arrived later, shouting "Black lives matter" and "say their names," referring to victims of police brutality. Others threw eggs at the Trump supporters from a passing car.
"My country's future is what brings me out here tonight," said Mitchell Landgraf, a 21-year-old construction worker who cast his first vote in a presidential election for Trump. "I'm afraid if it goes one way that this country will go downhill fast."
At least 400 protesters gathered outside the Clark County Election Department in Las Vegas. Loud patriotic anthems blared over speakers as people waved giant Trump and American flags.
In Detroit, a Black Trump supporter and a Black Democratic supporter faced off for a yelling match. Earlier, police tried to separate Black Lives Matter-aligned protesters from the Trump group but soon relented, allowing them to mingle and shout at each other.
One woman carrying a holstered pistol she said she represented the Michigan Home Guard, a right-wing militia.
"I'm not going to violently burn the city down, but I'm going to continue to fight for election integrity," said Michelle Gregoire, 29, in a state where election returns showed Trump with a lead on election night that turned into a Biden victory on Wednesday. "It's not OK what they're doing in there."
According to a report by the Associated Press, President Trump continues to enjoy enormous support in the counties where the virus had the worse impact.
Out of a total of 376 counties which have the highest number of new cases per capita, an overwhelming majority (or 93%) voted for President Trump.
Most of these areas comprised of rural counties, which have noticeably lower rates of adherence to social distancing and other public health measures, including counties such as Montana, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin. The lack of adherence to public health measures led to these areas becoming a "hot-spot" for the virus.
With the election finally in its latter stages, state health officials aim to reframe their messaging, especially as cases are on the rise.
WASHINGTON: Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden on Thursday edged toward the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, but several battleground states were still in play, as incumbent President Donald Trump cried foul over the ongoing vote count.
As it stands, there are five states still left uncalled, including major prizes such as Pennsylvania, and key small state Nevada -- meaning both Trump and Biden still have a path to victory.
US media outlets have projected wins for the Republican incumbent in 23 states including big prizes Florida and Texas, as well as Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio -- all states he won in 2016.
Biden has captured 22 states including his home state Delaware and big prizes California and New York, as well as the US capital.
The former vice president has flipped three states won by Trump in 2016 -- Michigan, Wisconsin and, according to two sources, Arizona.
In the case of Arizona, Fox News and the Associated Press have already called the race in Biden's favor, putting him at 264 electoral votes. Politico and The Wall Street Journal are also using this figure.
But other networks including CNN and NBC News have held back thus far from calling Arizona, giving him a total of 253.
Nebraska split its electoral votes between the two candidates -- four for Trump and one for Biden. Maine was won by Biden, but he seized only three of the four electoral votes on offer, with the last allocated to Trump.
So far, that gives Biden 264 electoral votes (or 253 without Arizona) and Trump 214.
If Biden holds on in Arizona, and wins Nevada, he would reach 270.
The following is a list of the states won by each candidate and the corresponding number of electoral votes, based on the projections of US media including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC/NBC News, ABC, CBS and The New York Times.
TRUMP (214)
Alabama (9)
Arkansas (6)
Florida (29)
Idaho (4)
Indiana (11)
Iowa (6)
Kansas (6)
Kentucky (8)
Louisiana (8)
Maine (1)***
Mississippi (6)
Missouri (10)
Montana (3)
Nebraska (4)**
North Dakota (3)
Ohio (18)
Oklahoma (7)
South Carolina (9)
South Dakota (3)
Tennessee (11)
Texas (38)
Utah (6)
West Virginia (5)
Wyoming (3)
BIDEN (253/264)
Arizona (11)*
California (55)
Colorado (9)
Connecticut (7)
Delaware (3)
District of Columbia (3)
Hawaii (4)
Illinois (20)
Maine (3)***
Maryland (10)
Massachusetts (11)
Michigan (16)
Minnesota (10)
Nebraska (1)**
New Hampshire (4)
New Jersey (14)
New Mexico (5)
New York (29)
Oregon (7)
Rhode Island (4)
Vermont (3)
Virginia (13)
Washington (12)
Wisconsin (10)
STATES NOT YET CALLED
Alaska
Arizona (*)
Georgia
Nevada
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Arizona has been placed in the Biden column by the Associated Press and Fox News, but other networks including CNN and NBC News have said the race is still too close to call.
Nebraska splits its five electoral votes -- two electors are assigned based on the plurality of votes in the state, and the other three are awarded based on congressional district. Biden took one vote, in the 2nd congressional district.
Maine has a similar method to Nebraska. Of its four electoral votes, three have been projected for Biden, while the fourth went to Trump.
WASHINGTON: Former vice president Joe Biden, making his third run at the White House, was tantalizingly close to victory on Thursday as President Donald Trump sought to stave off defeat with scattershot legal challenges and his campaign insisted he would be reelected.
Biden, 77, needs a total of 270 votes to capture the Electoral College that determines the White House winner and the magic figure was in reach with several states expected to announce their results on Thursday.
The former senator from Delaware and Democratic hopeful currently has 253 electoral votes -- or 264 if the 11 electoral votes from the southwestern state of Arizona are included.
Trump, 74, trails with 214 electoral votes but Jason Miller, his top campaign strategist, said the Republican incumbent will "again win the race."
"We think that as soon, possibly, as the end of tomorrow, on Friday it will be clear to the American public that President Trump and Vice President (Mike) Pence will serve another four years in the White House," Miller told reporters.
The current Electoral College tallies say otherwise with Biden on track to win Arizona and Nevada and possibly even pick off Georgia and Pennsylvania.
"Let me be very clear, our data shows that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States," his campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon told reporters. "We're very confident, whatever happens with the counting and the timing, we will come out ahead."
Trump is currently ahead in Georgia and Pennsylvania but Biden has been chipping away at his leads as the votes continue to be tallied -- slowly in some states this year because of the huge volume of mail-in votes due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump had a roughly 18,000 vote lead in Georgia early Thursday with about 60,000 votes remaining to be counted, much of it from the heavily Democratic suburbs of Atlanta.
He was leading by about 122,000 votes in Pennsylvania with 91 percent of the vote counted but Biden has been narrowing the margin.
"STOP THE COUNT!" Trump tweeted on Thursday morning. "ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!"
While Trump was demanding that vote-counting be halted in Georgia and Pennsylvania -- where he is leading -- his supporters and campaign were insisting that it continue in Arizona and Nevada, where he is trailing.
Trump prematurely declared victory Wednesday and threatened to seek Supreme Court intervention to stop vote-counting but it has continued nonetheless.
'STOP THE COUNT!'
Fox News and AP news agency projected Biden as the winner in Arizona on Tuesday night. But other outlets have yet to do so and vote-counting continues in the state, where Biden has a fairly healthy 69,000 vote lead.
With 86 percent of the vote counted, Biden had a razor-thin 8,000-vote lead in Nevada, which has six electoral votes.
Nevada was won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and much of the outstanding vote is from areas of the western state that skew towards Democrats.
In Georgia, Gabriel Sterling of the Secretary of State's office, appealed for patience and dismissed Trump campaign claims of irregularities among election workers.
"These people are not involved in voter fraud," Sterling said.
"This is a long process, but I think all of us would agree that having an accurate count is much more vital," he added.
Pennsylvania, Biden's birthplace, has 20 electoral votes and was considered one of the major prizes in Tuesday's election.
Georgia, with 16 electoral votes, has been a reliably Republican state but could land in the Democratic column for the first time since Bill Clinton won it in 1992.
Trump won both states in 2016 in carving out his upset victory over Hillary Clinton.
With potential defeat looming, Trump has launched multiple legal challenges, announcing lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania and demanding a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden won by just 20,000 votes.
Bob Bauer, a lawyer for the Biden campaign, dismissed the slew of lawsuits as "meritless."
"All of this is intended to create a large cloud," Bauer said. "But it's not a very thick cloud. We see through it. So do the courts and so do election officials."
'Count the votes!'
In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign said a court had given the green light for its "observers" to watch ballot-counting in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia. Earlier Trump supporters had been kept as much as 100 feet (30 meters) away.
Attempts to stop vote-counting in states where Trump is leading were not restricted to the courts.
In the Michigan city of Detroit, a majority-Black Democratic stronghold, a crowd of mostly-white Trump supporters chanting "Stop the count!" tried to barge into an election office Wednesday before being blocked by security.
Television networks have projected a Biden win in Michigan, but final ballots are still being counted.
In the Arizona county of Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, an aggressive pro-Trump crowd gathered outside a counting office chanting "Count the votes!" -- some of them openly carrying firearms, which is legal in the state.
In stark contrast to Trump's unprecedented rhetoric about being cheated, Biden has sought to project calm, reaching out to a nation torn by four years of polarizing leadership and traumatized by the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We have to stop treating our opponents as enemies," Biden said Wednesday. "What brings us together as Americans is so much stronger than anything that can tear us apart."
The tight White House race and recriminations have evoked memories of the 2000 election between Republican George W Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
That race, which hinged on a handful of votes in Florida, eventually ended up in the Supreme Court, which halted a recount while Bush was ahead.
WASHINGTON: The US presidential election could be settled Thursday as a handful of battleground states complete their vote counts.
Democrat Joe Biden has racked up at least 253 of the 270 electoral votes that he needs, according to US network projections -- and 264 if Arizona is included, which Fox News and the Associated Press have called in his favor.
Donald Trump has amassed 214 electoral votes so far, and is still in contention in several states that would afford the Republican incumbent a path to reelection.
Expected to report final vote counts on Thursday are Georgia (16 electoral votes), North Carolina (15), and Nevada (6).
However, mail-in ballots sent on or before Election Day in North Carolina can be counted until November 12.
Biden could reach the magic number to gain the White House with a win in any of the three, if he keeps Arizona. Trump needs to capture all three to stay competitive.
Here is a look at the situation in the key states that are still up for grabs, and paths to victory for each candidate:
Nevada
Nevada, where Biden is favored, could put him precisely at the number needed to win, if he keeps Arizona. With more than 87 percent of the vote counted, Biden was leading by about 12,000 votes, according to CNN.
North Carolina
In North Carolina, Trump had a comfortable lead of about 77,000 votes with 95 percent of the ballots, about 5.38 million, tabulated.
Georgia
In Georgia just after midday, Biden lagged Trump by just over 13,500 votes with about 98 percent counted.
But he could pull in the lion's share of the final votes being counted, which include thousands in Democratic-leaning areas.
Gabriel Sterling, who works for Georgia's secretary of state, told reporters early Thursday that about 60,000 votes remained uncounted.
"Fast is great, and we appreciate fast. We more appreciate accuracy," he said.
Georgia has not chosen a Democrat for president since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is the biggest prize remaining, with 20 electoral votes. As in Georgia, Trump is currently leading, but the majority of votes left to be counted are in Democratic-leaning areas like greater Philadelphia.
At midday, Trump's lead stood at about 116,000 votes, with 92 percent of the ballots counted.
Arizona
One wild card that could upset these calculations: Arizona. Fox News and the Associated Press have already called the race in Biden's favor, but other networks including CNN and NBC have said the race is still too close to call.
Arizona's Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told ABC News that she did not expect a final count on Thursday -- but also that she doesn't expect a recount.
"It's not looking like today, probably closer to tomorrow that we'll be closer to getting through all those ballots," Hobbs said.
On Thursday, Biden had a lead of about 69,000 votes with more than 86 percent of the ballots counted.
Paths to victory
Much of the delay has resulted from a flood of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic -- and those votes have tended to favor Democrats.
If Biden's lead in Arizona holds, and he wins Nevada or Georgia, he would pass the threshold of 270 electoral votes.
Should Trump hold North Carolina and Georgia but lose Arizona, he must take Nevada as well as Pennsylvania to win.
Simply winning Pennsylvania -- where Trump leads but faces a possible onslaught of pro-Biden mailed ballots -- will not be enough for the president, even if he takes Alaska's three electoral votes as expected.
Much to Trump's chagrin, Pennsylvania has decided to allow mailed ballots sent by Election Day but received up to three days afterwards to be counted. Authorities expect to complete the count by Friday.
Another factor that could keep the battle alive: the Trump campaign has unleashed a legal blitz in key states vital to the incumbent's reelection.
It has sued to disqualify late-arriving ballots in Pennsylvania, sued in Nevada and Georgia over alleged irregularities, and has demanded a recount in Wisconsin.
(Reuters) - President Donald Trump has claimed without evidence that unprecedented numbers of mail-in ballots will lead to widespread fraud by Democrats in the November presidential election.
The president has also repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if the vote count indicates he has lost to Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
The comments have Democrats worried that Trump's campaign will seek to dispute the election results. That could set off one of many legal and political dramas in which the presidency could be decided by some combination of the courts, state politicians and Congress.
Here are some of the messy scenarios at play:
LAWSUITS: Early voting data shows Democrats are voting by mail in far greater numbers than Republicans. In states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that do not count mail-in ballots until Election Day, initial results could skew in Trump's favor, experts say, while the mail ballots counted more slowly are expected to favor Biden. Democrats have expressed concern that Trump will declare victory on election night and then claim mail-in ballots counted in the following days are tainted by fraud.
A close election could result in litigation over voting and ballot-counting procedures in battleground states. Cases filed in individual states could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court, as Florida's election did in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush prevailed over Democrat Al Gore by just 537 votes in Florida after the high court halted a recount.
Trump has pushed the Republican-held Senate to confirm Amy Coney Barrett as Supreme Court justice, which would create a 6-3 conservative majority that could favor the president if the courts weigh in on a contested election.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE: The U.S. president is not elected by a majority of the popular vote. Under the Constitution, the candidate who wins the majority of 538 electors, known as the Electoral College, becomes the next president. In 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton but secured 304 electoral votes to her 227.
The candidate who wins each state's popular vote typically earns that state's electors. This year, the electors meet on Dec. 14 to cast votes. Both chambers of Congress will meet on Jan. 6 to count the votes and name the winner.
Normally, governors certify the results in their respective states and share the information with Congress.
But some academics have outlined a scenario in which the governor and the legislature in a closely contested state submit two different election results. Battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina all have Democratic governors and Republican-controlled legislatures.
According to legal experts, it is unclear in this scenario whether Congress should accept the governor's electoral slate or not count the state's electoral votes at all.
While most experts view the scenario as unlikely, there is historical precedent. The Republican-controlled Florida legislature considered submitting its own electors in 2000 before the Supreme Court ended the contest between Bush and Gore. In 1876, three states appointed "dueling electors," prompting Congress to pass the Electoral Count Act (ECA) in 1887.
Under the act, each chamber of Congress would separately decide which slate of "dueling electors" to accept. As of now, Republicans hold the Senate while Democrats control the House of Representatives, but the electoral count is conducted by the new Congress, which will be sworn in on Jan. 3.
If the two chambers disagree, it's not entirely clear what would happen.
The act says that the electors approved by each state's "executive" should prevail. Many scholars interpret that as a state's governor, but others reject that argument. The law has never been tested or interpreted by the courts.
Ned Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, called the ECA's wording "virtually impenetrable" in a 2019 paper exploring the possibility of an Electoral College dispute.
Another unlikely possibility is that Trump's Vice President Mike Pence, in his role as Senate president, could try to throw out a state's disputed electoral votes entirely if the two chambers cannot agree, according to Foley's analysis.
In that case, the Electoral College Act does not make clear whether a candidate would still need 270 votes, a majority of the total, or could prevail with a majority of the remaining electoral votes - for example, 260 of the 518 votes that would be left if Pennsylvania's electors were invalidated.
"It is fair to say that none of these laws has been stress-tested before," Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer who represented the Bush campaign during the 2000 dispute, told reporters in a conference call on Oct. 20.
'CONTINGENT ELECTION': A determination that neither candidate has secured a majority of electoral votes would trigger a "contingent election" under the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. That means the House of Representatives chooses the next president, while the Senate selects the vice president.
Each state delegation in the House gets a single vote. As of now, Republicans control 26 of the 50 state delegations, while Democrats have 22; one is split evenly and another has seven Democrats, six Republicans and a Libertarian.
A contingent election also takes place in the event of a 269-269 tie after the election; there are several plausible paths to a deadlock in 2020.
Any election dispute in Congress would play out ahead of a strict deadline - Jan. 20, when the Constitution mandates that the term of the current president ends.
It's still not clear yet if the next U.S. president will be incumbent Donald Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden, but whoever triumphs will face monumental challenges on the economic front.
The recession has been ugly. It has wiped away more than a year of economic output and more than five years of jobs growth.
The workforce is now smaller than it was a year before Trump first took office.
One bright spot - consumer spending - is stronger than it was right after the pandemic exploded in March, but still only back to where it was last June.
Housing prices are on the rise, which is a great thing for U.S. homeowners but at the same time is worsening the affordability crisis for aspiring home buyers.
Manufacturing activity - a key concern in the Midwestern battleground states - has rebounded, but manufacturing employment is in worse shape than employment overall.
And the coronavirus is still surging across most of the United States. Nearly 6,000 people died last week, and there's growing concern that the U.S. might need to reinstate lockdowns that happened across Europe in order to get it under control.
But despite signs the economy has begun to slow again amid another viral onslaught, "it is almost certain that the economy will get better over the course of 2021," says Jason Furman, a key economic advisor to Barack Obama, the last U.S. president elected during a time of economic turmoil.
Late 2021 is still a long ways away, not just in political terms but for those living paycheck to paycheck, or out of work.
Federal Reserve policymaker projections put unemployment at 5.5% by the end of next year - worse than the 4.7% when Trump was first elected, but an improvement over the current 7.9%.
Beyond jobs lost and economic output curtailed, either Trump or Biden will face a list of long-term headwinds including deepening inequality, rising federal debt and tattered international trade relations.
In the run-up to the election, Trump consistently polled better than Biden on his ability to create jobs and manage the economy, if not the virus.
But even with the election outcome uncertain, and likely to remain so for some time amid legal challenges, stock market investors like what they see.
That's partly because Republicans look likely to keep their hold on the Senate, leaving policy priorities relatively unchanged if it's Trump emerging the winner, or as preventive force to a president Biden from trying to push through any big policy changes should he come out on top in the ballot box.
It's also because Senate Majority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell signaled Wednesday he was open to a new coronavirus aid bill in the "lame duck" session before the elected members of Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are sworn in.
For the still-weak economy, a lot will depend on the timing, size and shape of a pandemic relief package, which eluded lawmakers and the White House before the election.
A more modest fiscal package could mean "the growth outlook and corporate profits may not be as vigorous as hoped," said James Knightley, chief international economist for ING.
A Biden presidency with a majority Republican Senate could offer the worst case for the economy in 2021 because Republicans are likely to oppose a substantial stimulus package, said Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank.
That would be bad news for the millions of low- and middle-income Americans out of work and struggling to find jobs in sectors such as travel and entertainment that are likely to remain moribund until the pandemic is under better control.
A scenario where Trump is re-elected and the Senate stays in Republican control could potentially result in more stimulus because Trump has advocated for more stimulus and could have more sway if he is re-elected, Luzzetti said.
Whatever the election outcome, any aid package should provide additional assistance for the unemployed, help for small businesses and assistance for state and local governments, to keep economic momentum going, Luzzetti said.
MOSCOW: Russia's foreign ministry on Thursday said outdated legislation and a lack of regulation had revealed flaws in the US electoral system, as votes were being tallied to decide the next American president.
The knife-edge US presidential race was tilted toward Democrat Joe Biden early Thursday, but President Donald Trump claimed he was being cheated and went to court to try and stop vote counting.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that both candidates had an equal chance of winning and pointed out "obvious shortcomings in the American electoral system."
"This is partly due to the archaic nature of the relevant legislation and a lack of regulation in a number of fundamental points," she said during her weekly press briefing.
Zakharova also said Russia hopes the United States will be able to elect the next president in "full compliance with the American constitution."
"And the most important thing is to avoid the occurrence of mass riots in the country," she added.
An observer mission from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitors votes around the West and the former Soviet Union, found no evidence of election fraud and said Trump's "baseless allegations" eroded trust in democracy.
A two-year investigation into links between Russian meddling in the 2016 election and Trump's campaign confirmed troubling behaviour but eventually ended in anticlimax.
As world is anxiously waiting for the outcome of the US election, social media users in Pakistan have created some interesting memes and jokes as counting continues to elect the new president of the United States between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Like other parts of the world, Pakistan too keeping a close eye on the outcome of the highly-anticipated polls, which were conducted on November 3.
Two days after polls close, Democrat Joe Biden edged closer to victory in the U.S. presidential race on Thursday with only handful of states that will determine the outcome of the Election.
President Donald Trump alleged fraud without providing evidence, filed lawsuits and called for recounts in a race yet to be decided.
During this scenario, as usual Pakistanis have found a way to make people laugh. Twitter is filled with hilarious memes and comments which are worth of having a look.
Here are some of them:
Villagers in the Indian ancestral home of Kamala Harris painted slogans on roads wishing her victory on Thursday, as Joe Biden, her Democrat running mate in the U.S. presidential election, moved closer to the White House.
Thulasendrapuram, located about 320 km (200 miles) south of Chennai, is where Harris’s maternal grandfather was born more than a century ago.
“From yesterday, we are excited about the final result,” said Abirami, a resident of the village. “Now, we are hearing positive news. We are waiting to celebrate her victory.”
Many of her neighbours watched updates from the count on their mobile phones.
The lush, green village in the south of the country has also been decked out in posters of Harris, with prayers offered at the local Hindu temple.
Biden leads the count and has predicted he will win but closely contested states - including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina - were still tallying votes, leaving the election outcome uncertain.
Harris’s grandfather P.V. Gopalan and his family moved to Chennai nearly 90 years ago. He retired there as a high-ranking government official.
Harris, who was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who both immigrated to the United States to study, visited Thulasendrapuram when she was five and has repeatedly recalled walks with her grandfather on the beaches of Chennai.
Chanting “Stop the steal!”, and “Count my vote”, the mostly unmasked protesters stood in front of the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix, as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden held a razor thin lead in the critical battleground state. Some news outlets have called Arizona for Biden, but Trump’s campaign says it is still in play.
A victory for Biden in Arizona would give the Democrat 11 electoral votes, a major boost in his bid to win the White House, while severely narrowing Trump’s path to re-election, in a state the Republican won in 2016.
On Election night Fox News and the Associated Press called Arizona for Biden, even though only just over 70% of the vote had been counted, a move that infuriated Trump and his aides.
Some of the roughly 200 protesters, who were faced by a line of armed county sheriffs, chanted “Shame on Fox!”. Some said they came out after a tweet from Mike Cernovich, a right-wing activist.
Chris Michael, 40, from Gilbert, Arizona, said he came to make sure all votes are counted. He said he wants assurances that the counting was done “ethically and legally.”
Rumors spread here on Facebook Tuesday night that some Maricopa votes were not being counted because voters used Sharpie pens to mark their ballots. Local election officials insisted that was not true.
With the count still under way in several key states, Trump has accused the Democrats of trying to steal the election without evidence and filed lawsuits in several states related to vote-counting.
A similar scene played out on Wednesday afternoon in downtown Detroit, where city election officials blocked about 30 people, mostly Republicans, from entering a vote-counting hall amid unfounded claims that the vote count was fraudulent.
Trump has filed a lawsuit in Michigan to stop vote-counting that the secretary of state called here "frivolous."
The protests echoed the “Brooks Brother riot” during the 2000 recount in Florida that ultimately handed the presidency to Republican George W. Bush. A crowd of blazer-clad Republican protesters stormed a building where a hand recount was underway in a heavily Democratic district, forcing poll workers to stop counting ballots.
The protest is now viewed as a significant event in keeping Bush’s slender vote advantage in Florida intact. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately stopped the Florida recount, handing Bush the presidency and defeat to Democrat Al Gore.
Police in the city of Portland made arrests and seized fireworks, hammers and a rifle after late night demonstrations, as Oregon Governor Kate Brown activated the state’s National Guard in response to “widespread violence” on the night after voting in the U.S. presidential election.
Portland Police said it arrested ten people in the demonstrations after declaring riots in the city’s downtown area while the New York Police Department (NYPD) said it made about 50 arrests in protests that spread in the city late on Wednesday.
“All of the gatherings that were declared riots were downtown. We have made 10 arrests”, a Portland Police spokesman told Reuters in an emailed statement.
Demonstrations were also seen in a few other U.S. cities on Wednesday night as activists demanding that vote counts proceed unimpeded rallied in several cities, including Atlanta, Detroit, New York, and Oakland.
Earlier on Wednesday, about 100 people gathered for an interfaith event before a planned march through downtown Detroit, in the battleground state of Michigan, to demand a full vote count and what they called a peaceful transition of power.
Local partners of Protect the Results - a coalition of more than 165 grassroots organizations, advocacy groups and labor unions - have organised over 100 events planned across the country between Wednesday and Saturday.
Heading into the Nov. 3 elections, the United States had seen months of protests following the death in May of George Floyd, an African-American who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
The protests once again picked up momentum following the police shooting later in the year of an African-American named Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin and more recently of 27-year-old Walter Wallace Jr. who was gunned down by two officers in Philadelphia.
Portland has seen several demonstrations since Floyd’s death, particularly in the city’s downtown area, with protests occasionally turning into clashes between demonstrators and police as well as between right- and left-wing groups.
The anti-racism protests have demanded an end to police brutality and racial inequality while the more recent demonstrations surrounding the Nov. 3 vote have demanded for a full count of the votes cast on Tuesday.
The outcome of the U.S. presidential election hung in the balance on Wednesday as several states continued to count their ballots, including some of the most competitive battlegrounds where the tally could take days to complete.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden has a slight edge over Republican President Donald Trump with 227 to 213 electoral votes. That leaves 98 electoral votes to be allocated, and possible paths to victory for both candidates. The winner needs to secure 270 votes.
Here is the state of play in nine states. The vote counts are supplied by Edison Research.
Alaska
Trump has a wide lead and is broadly expected to carry the state. Still, just 56% of the expected vote has been counted, with Trump ahead by 62.9% to 33%.
Arizona
Biden has a significant lead, and the Associated Press and Fox News have already called the state for the Democrat. With 86% of the expected vote counted, Biden leads with 50.7% against 47.9% for Trump, according to Edison Research.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told ABC News that Maricopa County, which includes heavily populated Phoenix, had about 400,000 outstanding ballots to be counted and would release more results later on Wednesday.
Georgia
Trump is holding onto a narrow lead, but several of the large counties around Atlanta that lean Democratic have substantial numbers of ballots still to count. With 95% of the expected vote counted, Trump is ahead with 49.7% versus 49% for Biden.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he hoped to have a result by the end of Wednesday.
Under Georgia law, if the margin between the candidates is less than or equal to 0.5 percentage point, a candidate may request a recount within two business days following the certification of results.
Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit to require that Chatham County, which includes Savannah, separate and secure late-arriving ballots to ensure they are not counted. The campaign said it had received information that late-arriving ballots in the county were improperly mingled with valid ballots.
Maine
Maine is one of two states that divide their Electoral College votes between the winner of the statewide popular vote and the winner in each of its congressional districts. Edison Research has allocated Biden two votes for the statewide outcome, which he leads by 53.8% to 43.2% with 87% of the state’s expected votes counted. It also called the state’s 1st Congressional District for Biden, giving him a third electoral vote from the state.
Trump has a lead of 51.4% to 45.1% in the state’s 2nd Congressional District. The Associated Press projected Trump the winner of the state’s fourth vote on Wednesday, with only 53.7% of the expected vote in.
Michigan
Biden has a growing margin, with CNN and NBC projecting Biden the winner there just before 4.30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT) on Wednesday. Biden leads Trump by 50.3% to 48.1% with 99% of the state’s expected votes counted.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said on Wednesday night that all valid ballots in the state had been counted, and that a lawsuit by Trump seeking to halt counting of votes there was “frivolous.”
Nevada
Long seen as a solid Biden-leaning state, Nevada now appears in play. Edison Research data shows 86% of the expected vote is in and Biden’s lead is just 49.3% to 48.7% for Trump.
State officials expect the remaining votes - largely mail-in ballots - to be counted by 9 a.m. PST (1700 GMT) on Thursday. Clark County, the state’s largest and home to Las Vegas, has tallied 84% of expected votes so far and Biden is ahead there 52.9% versus 45.4% for Trump.
North Carolina
The margin between Trump and Biden is less than 2 percentage points as the president clings to a lead of 50.1% to 48.7% for the Democrat, with 95% of the expected vote counted.
The state allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday to be counted if they are received by Nov. 12. On Wednesday morning, the Biden campaign said it expected a final result to take several days, and state officials said later on Wednesday that a full result would not be known until next week.
Pennsylvania
Of the battleground states, Pennsylvania has the furthest to go in counting votes, and Trump so far maintains a lead. With 88% of the expected vote counted, Trump is up 50.8% to 47.9% for Biden.
Officials there can accept mailed-in ballots up to three days after the election if they are postmarked by Tuesday. About 1 million votes remain to be counted, Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said on Wednesday.
If the margin of victory is within half of 1%, state law requires a recount.
The Trump campaign said on Wednesday it was suing to temporarily halt vote counting in Pennsylvania and also asked to intervene in a U.S. Supreme Court case over mail-in ballots in the state, which could determine the winner of the election.
Wisconsin
The Trump campaign said on Wednesday it would request a recount of votes in Wisconsin, where the margin between the candidates is less than 1 percentage point.
Biden is up 49.4% to 48.8% for Trump with 99% of the expected vote tallied, according to Edison Research. Edison said that it would not call a race in Wisconsin or any state where the margin is narrow enough to allow a candidate to demand a recount under state law. Some media outlets, including NBC and the Associated Press, projected Biden the winner.
Note: Vote counts supplied by Edison Research, which provides exit polls and voting data to the National Election Pool media consortium. Reuters has not independently tabulated the ballots.
WASHINGTON: While President Donald Trump wants the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a presidential race that is still too close to call, it may not be the final arbiter in this election, legal experts said.
They said it was doubtful that courts would entertain a bid by Trump to stop the counting of ballots that were received before or on Election Day, or that any dispute a court might handle would change the trajectory of the race in closely fought states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
With ballots still being counted in many states in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Trump made an appearance at the White House and falsely declared victory against Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
Trump railed against voting by mail during the election campaign, saying without providing evidence that it led to fraud, which is rare in U.S. elections. Sticking to that theme, Trump said: “This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”
Trump did not provide any evidence to back up his claim of fraud or detail what litigation he would pursue at the Supreme Court. Later in the day, his campaign filed to intervene in a case already pending at the Supreme Court seeking to block late-arriving mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
The Trump campaign and other Republicans have also filed various complaints in other states, including an attempt to stop votes being counted in Michigan.
As of Wednesday evening, the election still hung in the balance. A handful of closely contested states could decide the outcome in the coming hours or days, as a large number of mail-in ballots cast amid the coronavirus pandemic appears to have drawn out the process.
However, legal experts said that while there could be objections to particular ballots or voting and counting procedures, it was unclear if such disputes would determine the final outcome.
Ned Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University, said the current election does not have the ingredients that would create a situation like in the 2000 presidential race, when the Supreme Court ended a recount in George W. Bush’s favor against Democrat Al Gore.
“It’s extremely early on but at the moment it doesn’t seem apparent how this would end up where the U.S. Supreme Court would be decisive,” Foley said.
Both Republicans and Democrats have amassed armies of lawyers ready to go to the mat in a close race. Biden’s team includes Marc Elias, a top election attorney at the firm Perkins Coie, and former Solicitors General Donald Verrilli and Walter Dellinger.
Trump’s lawyers include Matt Morgan, the president’s campaign general counsel, Supreme Court litigator William Consovoy, and Justin Clark, senior counsel to the campaign.
WILMINGTON: Democrat Joe Biden said on Wednesday he expects to win the presidential election, saying he believes it is clear his campaign is winning enough states to win the presidency.
“After a long night of counting, it’s clear that we’re winning enough states to reach 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency,” Biden said. “I’m not here to declare that we’ve won, but I am here to report that when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
WILMINGTON, Del./WASHINGTON: Democrat Joe Biden said on Wednesday he was headed toward a victory over President Donald Trump in the U.S. election after claiming the pivotal Midwestern states of Wisconsin and Michigan, while the Republican incumbent opened a multi-pronged attack on vote counts by pursuing lawsuits and a recount.
Wisconsin and Michigan were giving Biden, the former vice president who has spent five decades in public life, a critical boost in the race to the 270 electoral votes in the state-by-state Electoral College needed to win the White House. Trump won both states in his 2016 election victory. Losing them would narrow his path to securing another four years in office.
“And now after a long night of counting, it’s clear that we’re winning enough states to reach (the) 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency,” Biden, appearing with his running mate Kamala Harris, said in his home state of Delaware. “I’m not here to declare that we’ve won. But I am here to report that when the count is finished we believe will be the winners.”
Trump’s campaign asked to intervene in a pending U.S. Supreme Court case over whether Pennsylvania, another key state that was still working its way through hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots, should be permitted to accept late-arriving ballots sent by Election Day.
His campaign also said it would request a recount in Wisconsin and added that it had filed lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania seeking to halt vote counting, arguing that officials had failed to allow fair access to counting sites.
Taken together, Trump’s legal maneuvers amounted to a broad effort to contest the results of an election yet to be decided a day after millions of Americans went to the polls during the coronavirus pandemic that has upended daily life. They followed Trump’s early-morning attacks on the integrity of the vote, as the president falsely claimed victory and suggested without substantiation that Democrats would try to steal the election.
Biden said, “Every vote must be counted. No one’s going to take our democracy away for us, not now, not ever. America’s come too far, America’s fought too many battles, America has endured too much to ever let that happen.”
Trump is trying to avoid becoming the first incumbent U.S. president to lose a re-election bid since George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Biden won Michigan by 67,000 votes, or 1.2%, while he was ahead in Wisconsin by just over 20,000 ballots, or 0.6%, according to figures from Edison Research, which projected Biden as the winner in Michigan. Several news outlets projected Biden as the winner in Wisconsin, though Edison did not, citing the pending recount.
Wisconsin law allows a candidate to request a recount if the margin is below 1%, which the Trump campaign immediately said it would do. In response to the Michigan lawsuit, Ryan Jarvi, a spokesman for the state attorney general, said the elections had been “conducted transparently.”
Voting concluded as scheduled on Tuesday night, but many states routinely take days to finish counting ballots. There was a surge in mail-in ballots nationally amid the pandemic. Other closely contested states including Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina were still counting votes, leaving the national election outcome uncertain.
At the moment, not including Wisconsin, Biden leads Trump 243 to 213 in Electoral College votes, which are largely based on a state’s population.
THE PANDEMIC EFFECT
The contentious aftermath capped a vitriolic campaign that unfolded amid a pandemic that has killed more than 233,000 Americans and left millions more jobless. The country has also grappled with months of unrest involving protests over racism and police brutality.
Supporters of both candidates expressed anger, frustration and fear with little clarity on when the election would be resolved.
Trump led in Georgia and North Carolina, while his lead dwindled in Pennsylvania. Without Wisconsin and Michigan, he would have to win all three as well as either Arizona or Nevada, where Biden was leading in the latest vote counts.
Biden would be only the second Democratic presidential candidate to win Arizona in 72 years. Trump won the state in 2016.
In Pennsylvania, Trump’s lead dropped to around 320,000 votes as officials gradually worked their way through millions of mail-in ballots, which were seen as likely to benefit Biden. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien called the president the winner in Pennsylvania, even though state officials had not completed the count. Biden said he felt “very good” about his chances in Pennsylvania.
In the nationwide popular vote, Biden on Wednesday was comfortably ahead of Trump, with about 3 million more votes. Trump won the 2016 election over Democrat Hillary Clinton after winning crucial battleground states even though she drew about 3 million more votes nationwide.
Legal experts had warned the election could get bogged down in state-by-state litigation over a host of issues, including whether states can include late-arriving ballots that were mailed by Election Day. Both campaigns have marshaled teams of lawyers in preparation for any disputes.
In the case in which the Trump campaign sought to intervene, the Supreme Court previously allowed Pennsylvania to move forward with a plan to count ballots mailed by Election Day that arrive up to three days later.
But some conservative justices suggested they would be willing to reconsider the matter, and state officials planned to segregate those ballots as a precaution.
Ahead of the election, Trump had said he wanted his latest U.S. Supreme Court appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed by the Senate in case the court had to hear any electoral dispute. Democrats had criticized the president for appearing to suggest he expected Barrett to rule in his favor.
Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that widespread mail-in voting would lead to fraud, although U.S. election experts say fraud is very rare.
Trump continued to make unsubstantiated attacks on the vote-counting process on Twitter on Wednesday, hours after he appeared at the White House and declared victory in an election that was far from decided. Both Facebook and Twitter flagged multiple posts from the president for promoting misleading claims.
“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said before launching an extraordinary attack on the electoral process by a sitting president. “This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”
Trump provided no evidence to back up his claim of fraud and did not explain how he would fight the results at the Supreme Court.
The election will also decide which party controls the U.S. Congress for the next two years, and the Democratic drive to win control of the Senate appeared to be falling short. Democrats had flipped two Republican-held seats while losing one of their own, and five other races remained undecided - Alaska, Michigan, North Carolina and two in Georgia.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump's campaign on Wednesday mounted challenges to vote counts in Wisconsin, which US media says Joe Biden has won, and Michigan, in which the Democrat holds a slim lead; two crucial states that could decide the election.
The Trump campaign alleged without evidence that there had been irregularities in "several" Wisconsin counties and that Michigan had not allowed the president's team to observe counting in "numerous" locations.
In Wisconsin, the Trump campaign said it had "serious doubts" about the validity of the results.
CNN and The New York Times, citing the Associated Press, have called the race in favor of the former vice president, giving him 10 more electoral votes and a total so far of 248. The magic number for victory is 270.
All votes have been counted and Biden enjoyed an edge of some 20,000 votes -- similar to Trump's margin when he won Wisconsin in 2016 over Hillary Clinton. "The president is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so," Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager, said.
Although Biden's margin was just a sliver of the more than 3.2 million votes cast in Wisconsin, Trump may have a hard time recovering that many through a typical recount. A recount in Wisconsin during the 2016 presidential election -- requested by the Green Party after Clinton's camp decided not to pursue it -- found only 131 extra votes for Trump.
"20,000 is a high hurdle," former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, a Republican, tweeted.
The campaign also said it was taking legal action to suspend the counting of remaining votes in Michigan, where remaining ballots are largely from Democratic-leaning areas including majority African-American Detroit.
"We have filed suit today in the Michigan Court of Claims to halt counting until meaningful access has been granted," Stepien said in a statement.
"We also demand to review those ballots which were opened and counted while we did not have meaningful access.
"President Trump is committed to ensuring that all legal votes are counted in Michigan and everywhere else."
Michigan authorities have said they are committed to counting every note. As the campaign announced its suit, Michigan's secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, tweeted a map of the Great Lakes state that said next to it, "Patience is a Virtue."
With Trump and Biden neck and neck across the rest of the country in electoral votes, the deciding states in their contest have come down to Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump's campaign said on Wednesday afternoon it had filed a lawsuit seeking to halt vote counting in Michigan and asserting that it had not been given enough access to counting sites to observe the opening of ballots. Biden was ahead by 45,000 votes out of more than 5 million ballots in Michigan.
Wisconsin officials finished their tally at around midday after an all-night effort, showing Biden with a lead of just over 20,000 votes, or 0.6%, according to Edison Research. The Trump campaign immediately said it would seek a recount, which is permitted under state law when the margin is below 1%.
A Biden victory in Wisconsin would significantly narrow Trump's path to a second four-year term, though the outcome remained in doubt with Michigan and other closely contested states including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina still counting votes.
Voting concluded as scheduled on Tuesday night, but many states routinely take days to finish counting ballots.
Trump led in the two Southern states, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as in Pennsylvania, where more than 1 million ballots were yet to be processed. But if Trump loses Wisconsin, he would have to win all three as well as either Arizona or Nevada, where Biden was leading in the latest vote counts.
At the moment, not including Wisconsin, Biden leads Trump 227 to 213 in Electoral College votes, which are largely based on a state's population.
In dueling conference calls with reporters earlier on Wednesday, officials from each campaign insisted their candidate would prevail.
"If we count all legal ballots, we win," Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said, setting the stage for the post-election litigation over ballot counting.
Biden campaign manager Jennifer O'Malley Dillon told reporters the former vice president was on track to win the election, while senior legal adviser Bob Bauer said there were no grounds for Trump to invalidate lawfully cast ballots.
"We're going to defend this vote, the vote by which Joe Biden has been elected to the presidency," said Bauer, adding that the campaign's legal team was prepared for any challenge.
Biden was expected to deliver an address later on Wednesday. The campaign also launched a new group, the Biden Fight Fund, to raise money for legal fights over the election.
Trump continued to make baseless attacks on the vote-counting process on Twitter on Wednesday, hours after he appeared at the White House and declared victory in an election that was far from decided. Both Facebook and Twitter flagged multiple posts from the president for promoting misleading claims.
"We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election," Trump said before launching an extraordinary attack on the electoral process by a sitting president. "This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop."
Trump provided no evidence to back up his claim of fraud and did not explain how he would fight the results at the Supreme Court, which does not hear direct challenges.
In the nationwide popular vote, Biden on Wednesday was comfortably ahead of Trump, with 2.6 million more votes. Trump won the 2016 election over Democrat Hillary Clinton after winning crucial battleground states even though she drew about 3 million more votes nationwide.
The election uncertainty only added to the anxiety many Americans were feeling following a vitriolic campaign that unfolded amid a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 Americans and left millions more jobless. The country has also grappled with months of unrest involving protests over racism and police brutality.
Biden's hopes of a decisive early victory were dashed on Tuesday evening when Trump won the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Texas.
Biden led in Arizona, a battleground state with a high Latino population, which would make him only the second Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in 72 years. Trump won the state in 2016.
In Pennsylvania, Trump led by nearly 3 million votes, but officials said they were slowly working their way through millions of mail-in ballots, which were seen as likely to benefit Biden. Across the state, there were about twice as many ballots left to count in counties that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 than in the counties won that year by Trump.
Among other undecided states, Nevada does not expect to update its vote count until Thursday, state officials said.
TEAMS OF LAWYERS
It was not clear what Trump meant by saying overnight that he would ask the Supreme Court to halt "voting." The high court does not hear direct challenges but instead reviews cases that have worked their way up from lower courts.
Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that widespread mail-in voting would lead to fraud, although U.S. election experts say fraud is very rare.
Legal experts have said the election outcome could get bogged down in state-by-state litigation over a host of issues, including whether states can include late-arriving ballots that were mailed by Election Day. Both campaigns have marshaled teams of lawyers in preparation for any disputes.
The Supreme Court previously allowed Pennsylvania to move forward with a plan to count ballots mailed by Election Day that arrive up to three days later, but some conservative justices suggested they would be willing to reconsider the matter. State officials planned to segregate those ballots as a precaution.
Ahead of the election, Trump had said he wanted his latest U.S. Supreme Court appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed by the Senate in case the court had to hear any electoral dispute. Democrats had criticized the president for appearing to suggest he expected Barrett to rule in his favor.
The election will also decide which party controls the U.S. Congress for the next two years, and the Democratic drive to win control of the Senate appeared to be falling short. Democrats had flipped two Republican-held seats while losing one of their own, and six other races remained undecided - Alaska, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and two in Georgia.
Trump's strong performance in Florida, a must-win state for his re-election, was powered by his improved numbers with Latinos.
Edison's national exit poll showed that while Biden led Trump among nonwhite voters, Trump received a slightly higher proportion of the nonwhite votes than he did in 2016. The poll showed that about 11% of African Americans, 31% of Hispanics and 30% of Asian Americans voted for Trump, up 3 percentage points from 2016 in all three groups.-Agencies
WASHINGTON: Democrat Joe Biden has won the vital battleground of Wisconsin, flipping a state won by Donald Trump in 2016, and boosting his own chances of winning the White House, US media projected.
CNN and The New York Times, citing the Associated Press, called the race in favor of the former vice president, giving him 10 more electoral votes and a total so far of 248. The magic number for victory is 270.
The Trump campaign has announced its intention to request a recount in the state, citing "reports of irregularities... which raise serious doubts about the validity of the result."
With 94 percent of votes counted in the state, Biden led Trump by about 20,000 votes.
Barack Obama won Wisconsin by seven points in 2012. But Hillary Clinton famously did not even bother to campaign there in 2016, and ended up suffering an embarrassing defeat to Trump, by less than a percentage point.
