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Americans spent the first part of Wednesday not knowing who would be the next president of the United States, as votes were still being counted in six battlefield states that could influence elections.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks at an election night event at the Chase Center in the early morning hours of November 4, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Image: AFP
WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump launched allegations of voter fraud on Wednesday, setting the stage for a possible legal battle as Democrat Joe Biden took a slight lead in key states that could decide the disputed race for the House. White
Americans woke up Wednesday not knowing who would be the next president of the United States, as votes were still being counted in six battle states that could influence the elections.
When Trump expressed frustration on Twitter at the slow vote count, Biden’s side expressed confidence that he was on track to win enough in the remaining state races.
Campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said a victory for the former vice president was a “foregone conclusion.”
Fueling fears of a constitutional crisis, Trump prematurely declared victory overnight and threatened to demand the intervention of the Supreme Court to stop the vote counting.
* Trump says he will go to the Supreme Court to dispute the election count
“We won this election,” the 74-year-old president said even before final vote counts were completed. “This is a fraud on the American public.”
LOOK: Trump: We won this election, ongoing vote count is a fraud
Trump, in a Twitter tweet labeled as potentially “misleading,” went on to allege without evidence Wednesday that there had been instances of fraud.
“Last night he was leading, often solidly, in many key states, in almost every case controlled and controlled by the Democrats,” Trump tweeted. “Then one by one, they began to magically disappear as the surprise dumps were counted.”
There have been no reports of wrongdoing and the leads in numerous states have alternated between the candidates as the votes were counted.
* Trump alleges ‘surprise ballot dumps’ in states where he led
Vote counting has been slow in several states this year due to the coronavirus-related increase in the use of mail-in ballots.
Trump has spent months denouncing mail-in ballots, making unsubstantiated claims that they are susceptible to fraud.
The outcome of the White House race appears to hinge on the results of six states where a winner has yet to be declared: Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
At 1600 GMT, Biden had slim leads in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, while Trump was ahead in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
But state election officials have warned that with tens of thousands of ballots pending in some states, millions in others, the leader board could change.
‘WE HAVE TO BE PATIENT’
Trump had a roughly 500,000 vote lead in Pennsylvania with an estimated 78% of the vote counted, but votes were expected from heavily Democratic parts of the state.
“We have to be patient,” Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said. “We may not know the results today.
“There are millions of vote-by-mail ballots,” he said. “They will be counted accurately and will be counted in their entirety.”
The Democratic governor ignored criticism from the White House for the slow vote count, saying that “our democracy is being tested in these elections.”
“Pennsylvania will have a fair election,” he said. “And that choice will be free from outside influences.”
Biden promised Wednesday that he would ensure that no Americans were disenfranchised.
“We will not rest until everyone’s vote is counted,” the 77-year-old former vice president said on Twitter.
The Biden campaign also criticized the claim of Trump’s victory as a “naked effort to take away democratic rights from American citizens.”
“If the president follows through on his threat to go to court to try to avoid the proper tabulation of votes, we have legal teams ready to be deployed to resist that effort,” he said.
Trump “will face one of the most embarrassing defeats a president has ever suffered in the nation’s highest court” if he asks him to invalidate the ballots counted after Election Day, former White House attorney Bob Bauer said, Biden’s team attorney.
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.
ROTATION RECORD
The US Elections Project estimated total turnout at a record 160 million voters, including more than 101.1 early voters, 65.2 million of whom voted by mail.
In an election that took place in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 230,000 lives in the United States, Trump appeared to have avoided a Democratic wave predicted by some polls.
But as of Wednesday afternoon none of the candidates had obtained the 270 votes necessary for the victory in the Electoral College that determines the winner of the presidential race.
Trump’s untimely declaration of victory was met with criticism from some of his Republican allies.
“Stop. Period. The votes will be counted and you will win or lose. And the United States will accept that. Patience is a virtue,” tweeted Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman who won reelection.
“I don’t agree with what he did tonight,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who helped Trump prepare for his first debate against Biden.
“There is simply no basis for making that argument tonight,” Christie told ABC News. “There just isn’t.”
Experts had been warning for weeks that this year’s election results would take time, and they expressed fears that Trump would cause chaos or even violence by questioning the process.
While there were no immediate reports of riots, stores have been boarded up throughout the capital, Washington.
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