Margins Razor-Thin
Former vice president Joe Biden, making his third run at the White House, was tantalizingly close to victory yesterday as President Donald Trump sought to stave off defeat with scattershot legal challenges.
The cliffhanger race is moving to a pivotal moment in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada as the final votes are counted that could swing the White House toward former vice president Joe Biden or hand President Donald Trump a second term.
The counts expected to trickle in today could offer more clarity of the destiny of the race, reported CNN. Biden currently leads with 253 electoral votes to Trump's 213, and 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency.
Fox News and AP news agency projected Biden as the winner in Arizona, which has 11 electoral votes, on Wednesday. But other outlets have yet to do so and vote-counting continues in the state, where Biden is holding on to a shrinking lead.
If the former vice president wins Pennsylvania, the race will be over. Thousands of mostly mail-in votes remain uncounted so far, with Biden trailing by just more than 115,000 votes. The Keystone State's Lt Gov John Fetterman, a Democrat, told CNN that the result could come as early as today and that he believed outstanding ballots in areas that favour Democrats would deliver a clear win for Biden.
In large population centers in the state like in Montgomery County, Biden is outperforming Trump with mail-in ballot counts and results to come are from Philadelphia, which has 12 percent of the state's population, and an overwhelming Democratic vote base.
The Democratic nominee has also been making a run in Georgia, which has 16 electoral votes, where the president's lead dwindled to about 13,500 votes overnight as results came in from Fulton County around Atlanta with 98 percent of the state vote count reported. There are only around 50,000 votes left to be counted in the state, according to a statement by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The story was reversed in Arizona, where several tranches of votes from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, narrowed Biden's lead to just under 69,000 votes with Trump's team insisting that the president will eventually prevail and keep his hopes of a path to 270 alive.
There is also a close contest in Nevada. According to the latest batch of result released by the state, Biden's lead in the state has gone up from 7,647 to more than 11,000. Biden holds 49.4 percent of the vote, while Trump holds 48.5 percent. The final result will come down again to mail-in votes, which could favor Biden since thousands are outstanding in Clark County, around Las Vegas which is usually Democratic territory. If Biden holds leads in Arizona and Nevada, he will get to 270.
However, Nevada is not expected to deliver a complete result until November 12, as it will be accepting mail-in vote deliveries until Tuesday.
The Republican president, who during the long and rancorous campaign attacked the integrity of the American voting system, has alleged fraud without providing evidence, filed lawsuits and called for at least one recount.
Some legal experts called the challenges a long shot unlikely to affect the eventual outcome of the election.
The president appears to have grown more upset as his leads in some states have diminished or evaporated during the counting. Yesterday morning, he weighed in on Twitter, writing, "STOP THE COUNT!"
The counting and court challenges set the stage for days if not weeks of uncertainty before Dec 8, the deadline to resolve election disputes.
Trump's campaign called for a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden has been projected to win by roughly 21,000 votes out of 3.3 million cast, a margin slim enough to entitle him to a recount. Candidates can ask for a recount in Wisconsin if they are within 1 percent of the winner's vote total -- but the recount cannot be formally requested until completion of the canvass, which could be as late as November 17.
However, elections experts said a recount in Wisconsin was seen unlikely to alter the result.
His campaign also filed lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania to stop vote counting. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, in charge of elections, called the Trump team's lawsuit "frivolous".
Trump's campaign filed a lawsuit in Georgia to require that Chatham County, which includes the city of Savannah, separate and secure late-arriving ballots to ensure they are not counted.
Delivering a blow to that effort, a judge there dismissed the petition. County elections officials testified that all the ballots had been received on time.
It also asked the US Supreme Court to allow Trump to join a pending lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania Republicans over whether the battleground state should be permitted to accept late-arriving ballots that were mailed by Election Day.
Trump's campaign said it planned to make an announcement in Las Vegas today. Fox News reported the campaign would announce another lawsuit, this one alleging voter fraud in Nevada.
Despite Trump's allegations of fraud and an unsubstantiated charge that Democrats are trying to "steal" the election, US election experts say fraud in balloting is rare.
"The litigation looks more like an effort to allow Trump to continue rhetorically attempting to delegitimatize an electoral loss," said Joshua Geltzer, executive director of Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.
If victorious, Biden would face a tough battle to govern, with Republicans appearing poised to keep control of the US Senate, which they could use to block large parts of his legislative agenda, including expanding healthcare access and efforts aimed at fighting climate change.
The contentious election aftermath capped a vitriolic campaign that unfolded amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 233,000 people in the United States and left millions more jobless. The country has also grappled with months of unrest involving protests over racism and police brutality.
With tensions rising, about 200 of Trump's supporters, some armed with rifles and handguns, gathered outside an election office in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday following unsubstantiated rumors that votes were not being counted. In Detroit, officials blocked about 30 people, mostly Republicans, from entering a vote-counting facility amid unfounded claims that the vote count in Michigan was fraudulent.
Anti-Trump protesters in other cities demanded that vote counting continue and there were arrests in Portland, Oregon, as well as New York, Denver and Minneapolis. Over 100 events are planned across the country between Wednesday and Saturday.
By early yesterday, Biden had drawn about 3.6 million more votes than Trump nationwide.
Trump defeated Democrat Clinton in 2016 after winning crucial battleground states and securing the Electoral College wine even though she drew about 3 million more votes nationwide.
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