Democrat Joe Biden approached victory over Donald Trump on Thursday in an extremely close American election that relied on very narrow margins in a handful of states, while the Republican president launched a series of lawsuits in hopes of slowing down his opponent. .
In a tweet, the president of the United States said that he will legally challenge the results of all the states recently won by the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, presumably pointing towards the states changed by his Democratic challenger: Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as those where he currently leads. like Arizona and Nevada.
“All of the states that Biden recently claimed will be legally challenged by us for voter fraud and state election fraud. Lots of evidence, just check the media. WE WILL WIN! America first!” said his tweet. The tweet, like several others from Trump since Election Day, was labeled as misleading by Twitter and was hidden.
Tensions rose in some places as the count dragged on two days after the polls closed, with a second day of street demonstrations sometimes mourning the integrity of the elections.
Biden, the former vice president of the United States, continued to cut Trump’s tracks in Pennsylvania and Georgia while clinging to tight margins in Nevada and Arizona.
Trump, who during the long and spiteful campaign attacked the integrity of the US voting system, again alleged voter fraud without providing evidence, filed lawsuits and called for at least a state recount.
The latest move by Trump’s campaign was a lawsuit to be announced later Thursday alleging voter fraud in Nevada, another of the crucial states where he is very close to Biden.
Some legal experts called the challenges a long shot that likely won’t affect the final outcome of the election, one of the most unusual presidential races in modern American history due to the coronavirus
pandemic. Concern about the virus led to a large increase in the number of postal voters, delaying the results.
Still, Biden led in Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona and was close to Trump in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Multiple Trump lawsuits and a recount request would have to be successful and, in some cases, find tens of thousands of invalid ballots to reverse the outcome if Biden prevails.
“What we are seeing in these lawsuits is that they have no merit, and nothing more than an attempt to distract and delay what is now inevitable: Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States,” said Biden’s campaign manager. , Jen O’Malley. Dillon told reporters.
The Trump campaign predicted victory, and campaign manager Bill Stepien said, “Donald Trump is alive and well” in the election.
Some of the outstanding votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania were clustered in places that were expected to lean Democratic, such as the Atlanta and Philadelphia areas.
In Georgia, officials expressed the hope of having a resolution on their vote count by the end of Thursday. Trump’s shrinking lead stood at around 14,000, with about 2 percent of the ballots to be counted. Trump’s lead was about 115,000 votes in Pennsylvania, with about 8 percent of ballots left to count.
Trump has to win the states in which he is still ahead, including North Carolina, as well as Arizona or Nevada to succeed and avoid becoming the first sitting US president to lose a re-election bid since his fellow Republican George HW Bush. in 1992.
The president seems to have gotten angrier that his advantages in some states have diminished or evaporated during the count. On Thursday morning, he took in on Twitter and wrote: “STOP THE COUNT!” and “STOP THE FRAUD!” although it has no authority over the counting of votes.
Trump, who has often enjoyed legal battles during his long and turbulent corporate career, was in the White House, working the phones and monitoring developments on television, two Trump advisers said.
He has been speaking with state governors, as well as close friends and advisers, and sent some of these closest advisers to the field to fight for him.
To conquer the White House, a candidate must accumulate at least 270 votes in the Electoral College state by state. These electoral votes are based primarily on the population of a state. Edison Research gave Biden a 243-213 lead in Electoral College votes. Other media outlets said Biden had won Wisconsin, which would give him another 10 votes.
The extremely close election has underscored the political polarization in the United States and the deep divisions along racial, socioeconomic, religious and generational lines, as well as between urban and rural areas.
The recounts and court challenges set the stage for days, if not weeks, of uncertainty before December 8, the deadline for resolving electoral disputes. The president takes office on January 20, 2021.
THIN MARGINS
The Trump campaign called for a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden led with roughly 21,000 votes out of 3.3 million cast, a margin thin enough to qualify for a recount. However, election experts said a recount in Wisconsin was unlikely to alter the outcome.
The Trump campaign announced plans to file a lawsuit in Nevada alleging a series of voting irregularities in populated Clark County, including Las Vegas, such as voting for people who left the state or died.
His campaign also filed lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania to stop the vote counting. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, in charge of the election, called the Trump team’s lawsuit “frivolous.”
The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in Georgia to demand that Chatham County, which includes the city of Savannah, segregate and secure late-arriving ballots to ensure they are not counted.
He also asked the United States Supreme Court to allow Trump to join a pending lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania Republicans over whether the battlefield state should be allowed to accept late-arriving ballots that were sent by. mail before Election Day.
Despite Trump’s fraud allegations and a baseless accusation that Democrats are trying to “steal” the election, US election experts say voting fraud is rare.
Thursday marked a second day of peaceful election-related protests when protesters gathered in cities including Philadelphia, Washington, Phoenix and Detroit. Some groups, mainly Democrats, joined the slogan of “counting every vote.”
Some Trump supporters responded with cries to “protect the vote” in support of his campaign efforts to discard some categories of ballots, including some votes sent by mail.
About 200 Trump supporters, some armed with rifles and pistols, gathered outside an election office in Phoenix Wednesday after unsubstantiated rumors that votes were not being counted.
Biden had gotten about 3.6 million more votes than Trump nationwide. Trump defeated Democrat Clinton in 2016 after winning crucial states on the battlefield and securing the Electoral College victory despite winning about 3 million more votes across the country.
With input from Reuters
.
