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WASHINGTON: Democrat Joe Biden won the crucial battlefield state of Michigan, US networks projected on Wednesday (Nov. 4), meaning the former vice president switched to another state won by President Donald Trump in 2016.
CNN and NBC News projected Biden’s victory in the Midwest state, which unexpectedly went to Trump by less than half a percentage point in 2016 in one of the staggering state losses suffered by Hillary Clinton.
With Michigan’s 16 electoral votes, Biden now has a total of 264, six less than the magic number of 270 needed to win the United States presidency, according to US network projections.
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“After a long night of counting, it is clear that we are winning enough states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency,” said Biden in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
“I am not here to declare that we won. But I am here to report, when the count is over, we believe we will be the winners,” added Biden.
Michigan, a state on the battlefield that will help determine who wins the US presidential election, continues to count “tens of thousands” of votes, according to a senior state official.
“We know that tens of thousands of ballots are still pending and need to be tabulated” in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, Kalamazoo and other cities, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said at a news conference Wednesday morning.
She said the pending vote count was just over 100,000, with the majority being absentee ballots.
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With 99 percent of the votes counted, Biden had a lead of just over 60,000 votes, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Benson said at the press conference that he was confident that the state’s electoral process could withstand a legal challenge. However, the Trump campaign later filed a lawsuit to stop the count in Michigan, claiming that it had not been allowed to observe the opening of the ballots.
Emotions rose Wednesday afternoon in downtown Detroit, where city election officials prevented about 30 people, mostly Republicans, from entering the vote-counting room at the TCF Center due to capacity restrictions. combat the spread of COVID-19.
Democrats said they had also been banned, and a poll worker told Reuters that Republicans were “trying to slow down and obstruct the count.”
Election hopefuls look through the doors of the central canvassing board on November 4, 2020 in Detroit. (Photo: AP / Carlos Osorio)
Detroit police were called in to enforce the decision and some of those excluded from the hall were agitated as election officials blocked the windows with pizza and cardboard boxes to prevent challengers from seeing inside.
Many stood outside the room voicing their protest and chanting “God Bless America,” while a second group of Republican election opponents who had been denied entry gathered in a prayer circle outside the convention center and they also chanted “Stop the voting” and “Stop the voting.” tell”.
Greg King of the Trump campaign said the problem arose when people went to lunch and did not close the session, so when they returned it created the appearance of too many people in the room.
A Democratic observer of the poll, Liz Linkewitz, said that she and other Democrats had also been excluded and that it was not a partisan issue.
“I’m very upset,” said Sherman Rogers, 53, a Republican who was among those banned from entering.
Later, a city election commissioner came out and explained that controlling the number of people in the room was necessary to protect against the coronavirus and that there were still participants in polls from all parties in the room. He left after people kept yelling for him.
Benson previously said he was optimistic that most ballots cast on or before Election Day will be tabulated into an unofficial count at the end of the day.
“The number of votes outstanding is even greater than the margin of difference in many races,” Benson said. “Our goal is to make sure we are transparent, but also completely accurate.”
