Elections in the US 2020: Russia’s Foreign Ministry also expressed fears that disputed elections could lead to unrest
Washington:
Former Vice President Joe Biden, making his third career in the White House, was tantalizingly close to victory Thursday as President Donald Trump tried to avoid defeat with scattered legal challenges.
Biden, 77, needs a total of 270 votes to capture the Electoral College that determines the winner of the White House and the magic number was within his grasp and several states were expected to announce their results Thursday.
The former Delaware senator currently has 253 electoral votes, or 264 if you include the 11 electoral votes from the southwestern state of Arizona.
Fox News and the AP news agency screened Biden as the winner in Arizona on Tuesday night. But other outlets have yet to do so, and vote counting continues in the state, where Biden has a pretty healthy lead.
The Democratic candidate could obtain the necessary votes for the victory of other states where the count continued Thursday: Georgia, Nevada or Pennsylvania.
With 86 percent of the votes counted, Biden has a minimum lead of 8,000 votes in Nevada, which has six electoral votes.
Nevada was won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and much of the pending votes come from areas of the western state that lean toward Democrats.
The 74-year-old Trump has significant advantages in Georgia and Pennsylvania, but Biden has been gaining ground as votes continue to be counted and his campaign is confident he can outmaneuver the president.
“STOP THE COUNT!” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.
STOP COUNTING!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2020
“ANY VOTE THAT ARRIVED AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!”
Trump prematurely declared victory early Wednesday and threatened to request the Supreme Court to intervene to stop the vote counting, but he has continued anyway.
Pennsylvania, Biden’s birthplace, has 20 electoral votes and was considered one of the top prizes in Tuesday’s election.
Georgia, with 16 electoral votes, has been a reliable Republican state, but it could land in the Democratic column for the first time since Bill Clinton won it in 1992.
Trump won both states in 2016 with his surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.
‘STOP THE COUNT!’
With defeat looming, Trump launched multiple legal challenges Wednesday, announcing lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania and demanding a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden won by just 20,000 votes.
In Michigan, the campaign filed a lawsuit to stop the tabulation of votes, saying its “observers” were not allowed to look closely.
And while Trump demanded that the counting of votes be halted in Georgia and Pennsylvania, where he leads, his supporters insisted that it continue in Arizona and Nevada, where it lags behind.
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.
An aggressive pro-Trump crowd gathered outside a vote counting office in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.
The protesters, some of whom were openly carrying firearms, which is legal in the state, chanted “Count the votes!” while law enforcement officers formed a protective line on the doors of the facility.
There were protests against Trump overnight in Portland, Oregon, resulting in at least 10 arrests, and businesses in several other major cities boarded up windows as a precaution.
In stark contrast to Trump’s unprecedented rhetoric about being duped, Biden has tried to project calm, reaching a nation torn by four years of polarizing leadership and traumatized by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We have to stop treating our opponents as enemies,” Biden said Wednesday. “What unites us as Americans is much stronger than anything that can separate us.”
The head of an international mission of observers to the US elections called Trump’s demands that the counting of votes be halted as a “serious abuse of power” on Thursday.
Michael Link told the German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung that Trump’s false accusations of fraud could pose “a danger that goes far beyond Election Day.”
“Even if he admits defeat and hands over office properly, his supporters, incited by rhetoric, may see violence as a legitimate tool because they no longer feel democratically represented,” said Link, who works for the Organization for Security and Operation in Europe.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry also expressed fears that a disputed election could spark unrest.
Russia hopes that the United States will be able to elect the next president in “full compliance with the US constitution,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
“And the most important thing is to avoid massive unrest in the country,” he added.
The tight race for the White House and the recriminations have 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.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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