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US presidential elections are not decided by popular vote, but by ensuring a majority in the state-by-state Electoral College, which has 538 members.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks the day after Americans voted on Presidential Election Day on November 4, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Image: AFP
WASHINGTON – Democrat Joe Biden took a big step Wednesday to conquer the White House, with victories in Michigan and Wisconsin that brought him closer to the majority, but President Donald Trump responded with fury as his campaign demanded that the vote count be suspended.
In a short speech on national television, flanked by American flags and his election to Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden said he was not yet declaring victory, but that “when the count is up, we believe we will be the winners.”
By shifting the battlefields of northern Michigan and Wisconsin, Biden reached 264 electoral votes to Trump’s 214 so far. Adding in the six from Nevada, where he is way ahead, or the bigger awards from Georgia or Pennsylvania, Biden would hit the magic number of 270 needed to win the White House.
In stark contrast to Trump’s increasingly heated rhetoric about being duped, Biden sought to project calm, reaching a nation torn by four years of polarizing leadership and traumatized by the COVID-19 pandemic, with new infections daily Wednesday near reach 100,000 for the first time.
“I know how deep and harsh are the opposing views in our country on so many things,” said Biden, 77.
“But I also know this: to progress we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies. What unites us as Americans is much stronger than anything that can separate us.”
US presidential elections are not decided by popular vote, but by ensuring a majority in the state-by-state Electoral College, which has 538 members.
GALLERY: US Elections, From Campaigns to Voting
American media organizations called Michigan for Biden, where he had an advantage of about 120,000 votes. Previously, Biden claimed Wisconsin, with a narrower but insurmountable lead.
The two states, along with Arizona, another that Biden was projected to switch, put the Democrat within arm’s reach to make Trump the first president of a term in 28 years.
TRUMP CLAIMS THAT HE IS DECEIVED
However, the 74-year-old Trump unilaterally claimed victory and made it clear that he would not accept the reported results, issuing unprecedented complaints, unsupported by any evidence, of fraud.
“The damage has already been done to the integrity of our system, and to the presidential election itself,” he tweeted, claiming without proof or explanation that “secretly thrown ballots” had been added in Michigan.
The Trump campaign announced lawsuits in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia and demanded a recount in Wisconsin.
In Michigan, the campaign filed a lawsuit to stop the tabulation of votes, saying its “observers” were not allowed to look closely.
In Detroit, a mostly black Democratic stronghold, a crowd of mostly white Trump supporters chanted “Stop the count!” and attempted to break into an electoral office before being blocked by security.
The Trump campaign said it was also demanding a halt to the counting of votes in Pennsylvania, after the president overnight called for Supreme Court intervention to exclude processing of mail-in ballots after polls closed.
And he demanded a recount in Wisconsin, citing unspecified “wrongdoing.”
The president’s personal attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, accused Democrats of sending fraudulent ballots. It also did not provide evidence.
“This is the way they intend to win,” Giuliani told reporters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city. “We are not going to let them get away with it.”
Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien claimed they had won in Pennsylvania, despite the result still being calculated, and rejected the call that gave Biden a victory in Arizona.
‘WE HAVE TO BE PATIENT’
In a role reversal, the US elections brought with them declarations of international concern, with German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer warning of a “highly explosive situation” that could create a “constitutional crisis.”
An observation mission by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors voting across the West and the former Soviet Union, found no evidence of voter fraud and said Trump’s “baseless allegations” eroded trust in the democracy.
The most crucial, and most complicated, contest could end in Pennsylvania, where Trump’s lead had shrunk to 200,000 votes.
“We have to be patient,” said Tom Wolf, the Democratic governor of the state where Republican lawmakers had prevented millions of mail-in ballots from being counted before Election Day.
“They will be counted accurately and they will be counted in their entirety,” Wolf told reporters.
The contest also hardened in Georgia, a state once considered solidly Republican, where Trump was up by just under 40,000 votes.
Richard Barron, director of elections for the strongly Democratic Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, told reporters in the tally room that he expected to finish later Wednesday.
The tight race for the White House and the recriminations evoked memories of the 2000 election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
That contest, which depended on a handful of votes in Florida, eventually ended in the Supreme Court, which stopped a recount while Bush led the way.
The U.S. Elections Project estimated total turnout at a record 160 million, including more than 101.1 million early voters, 65.2 million of whom cast their ballots by mail amid the pandemic.
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