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US President-elect Joe Biden will win the battleground state of Arizona, Edison Research projected, delivering another blow to President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election results.
Biden’s victory in Arizona gives the Democrat 290 electoral votes in the state-by-state Electoral College determining the winner, more than the 270 needed to claim victory.
He’s also winning the popular vote by more than 5.2 million votes, or 3.4 percentage points.
With some states still counting votes, the electoral math is overwhelming for President Trump. He has repeatedly claimed that the elections were marred by widespread fraud, with no evidence to support his claims.
The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits challenging vote counting in individual states, although some have already been thrown out by justices.
Legal experts have said the litigation has little chance of altering the outcome, and state election officials have said they see no evidence of serious wrongdoing or fraud.
Manual count audits in more than six Arizona counties, including Maricopa County, where most of the state’s residents live, found only minor discrepancies, the secretary of state’s office reported today.
The audits involve the manual counting of a random sample of ballots.
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So far, most Republican officials and politicians have publicly endorsed Trump’s attempt to challenge the election results and have refused to recognize Biden as president-elect.
But a handful of Republican senators have urged the Trump administration to allow Biden to receive intelligence reports, implicitly acknowledging that he could eventually occupy the White House even as they refused to acknowledge his victory.
The president-elect traditionally receives such reports from the intelligence community to learn of the threats the United States faces before taking office.
Senator John Cornyn told reporters: “I don’t see it as a high-stakes proposition. I just think it’s part of the transition. And, if he does indeed win in the end, I think they should be able to get the floor right.”
Other Republican senators also said that Biden should have access to classified briefings, including Lindsey Graham, a vocal Trump supporter, as well as Ron Johnson, James Lankford and Chuck Grassley.
However, the top House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, opposed the idea.
He said, “He is not president right now. I don’t know if he will be president on January 20.”
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