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By Reuters 
16h ago
John Whitesides and Joseph Ax
Washington – Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden took a narrow lead over President Donald Trump on the battlefield state of Georgia for the first time on Friday, putting the White House within his grasp as this and other swing states continue to count the votes. .
Biden has a 253-214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote determining the winner, according to most major television networks. Winning Georgia’s 16 electoral votes would put the former vice president at the top of the 270 he needs to secure the presidency.
Biden, 77, would become the next president by winning Pennsylvania, or by winning two from the trio of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.
Trump’s most likely path seems narrower: He needs to hold on to both Pennsylvania and Georgia and also overtake Biden in Nevada or Arizona.
Biden is now ahead by 917 votes in Georgia, where the count continued early Friday.
The change in Georgia came hours after Trump appeared at the White House to falsely claim that he was “stealing” the election.
Trump had seen his lead steadily shrink in Georgia, a southern state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992, as officials worked with tens of thousands of uncounted votes, many from Democratic strongholds like Atlanta.
Georgia’s secretary of state reported late Thursday that about 14,000 ballots remained to be counted in the state.
The state will also have to examine the votes of military personnel and foreign residents, as well as provisional ballots cast on Election Day by voters who had problems with their registration or identification.
Biden has also been steadily reducing the lead of the Republican incumbent in Pennsylvania. Its deficit had dropped to just over 18,000 there by early Friday, and it was expected to continue to decline as many of the yet-to-be-counted ballots were cast in Democratic areas.
Biden also held slim leads in Arizona and Nevada. In Arizona, his lead dropped to about 47,000 early Friday, and in Nevada he was ahead by about 11,500 votes.
As the country held its breath for an outcome in the White House race, Georgia and Pennsylvania officials expressed optimism that they would finish counting on Friday, while Arizona and Nevada were still expected to take days to complete their vote totals. .
Trump, 74, has tried to portray the slow counting of mail-in ballots as fraudulent, which gained popularity due to fears of exposure to the coronavirus through in-person voting. As the tallies on those ballots have been counted, they have eroded the strong initial advantages the president had in states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Historically, states have taken time after Election Day to count all votes.
Trump released several tweets in the early hours of Friday morning, reiterating complaints he previously issued at the White House. “I easily WIN the US Presidency with LEGAL VOTES,” he said on Twitter, offering no proof that illegal votes were cast.
Twitter flagged the post as possibly misleading, something it has done with numerous Trump posts since Election Day.
In an extraordinary assault on the democratic process, Trump appeared in the White House meeting room Thursday night and baselessly claimed that the election was being “stolen.”
Without offering proof, Trump lashed out at poll workers and harshly criticized pre-election polls that he said were designed to suppress voting because he favored Biden.
“They are trying to rig an election and we cannot allow that to happen,” said Trump, who spoke for about 15 minutes in the White House meeting room before leaving without answering questions. Several television networks were interrupted during their comments, and the presenters said they needed to correct their statements.
Biden, who earlier in the day asked for patience as the votes were counted, responded on Twitter: “No one is going to take away our democracy. Not now, not ever.”
Trump’s inflammatory comments followed a series of Twitter posts from Trump earlier in the day calling for the vote counting to be stopped, even though he is currently behind Biden in enough states to hand over the Democrat to the presidency.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign followed a series of lawsuits in various states, although judges in Georgia and Michigan were quick to dismiss the challenges there. Legal experts said the cases had little chance of affecting the election result, and Biden’s campaign senior legal advisor Bob Bauer called them part of a “broader disinformation campaign.”
The close election underscored the nation’s deep political divisions, while the slow counting of millions of mail-in ballots served as a reminder of the deadly coronavirus that continues to revolutionize American life.
Biden, if he prevails, will nevertheless have failed to deliver the widespread repudiation of Trump that Democrats had hoped for, reflecting the deep support the president enjoys despite his tumultuous four years in office. Trump’s influence in the Republican Party will remain strong, even if he ultimately loses a close election.
The winner will face a pandemic that has killed more than 234,000 Americans and left millions more without jobs, even as the country continues to grapple with the aftermath of months of race relations riots and police brutality.
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