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ROME, GEORGIA / PHILADELPHIA (REUTERS) – President Donald Trump again questioned the integrity of the U.S. election on Sunday (Nov. 1), saying that a vote recount extending after Election Day would be “somewhat terrible “and suggested that his lawyers might get involved.
With two days left until Tuesday’s election and trailing rival Joe Biden in opinion polls, Trump raced through battle states in a belated search for support, while Biden implored attendees in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania. get out there and vote.
Americans rushed to vote early, already casting nearly 60 million mail-in ballots that could take days or weeks to count in some states, meaning a winner may not be declared in the hours after the polls close. On tuesday night.
“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait a long period of time after the election,” Trump told reporters before a rally in North Carolina. Some states, including Pennsylvania, don’t begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day, slowing down the process.
Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud, although election experts say that is rare in American elections.
Voting by mail is a long-standing feature of American elections, with roughly one in four ballots cast that way in 2016.
Democrats have pushed voting by mail as a safe way to cast a vote during the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump and Republicans have large in-person turnout on Election Day.
“We are going to go at night, as soon as the elections are over, we go with our lawyers,” Trump told reporters without offering further explanation.
Trump denied an Axios report in which he told his confidants that he will declare victory Tuesday night if it appears he is ahead, even if the Electoral College result is unclear.
But he said it was “a terrible thing” that the ballots were counted after Tuesday’s elections.
When asked about the Axios report, Biden told reporters between campaign stops in Philadelphia: “The president is not going to steal this election.”
Trump, aiming to avoid becoming the first incumbent president to lose a re-election bid since his Republican colleague George HW Bush in 1992, lags behind Biden in national opinion polls.
But the contest looks so close in enough battlefield states that Trump could still get the 270 votes needed to win in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the victor.
Trump held rallies in Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia, and planned an afternoon in Florida.
Biden, the former vice president, made several appearances in Pennsylvania, the state where he was born and is crucial to his search for the White House.
“There is nothing I can do to stop this nation from voting,” Biden said at a rally in a parking lot outside a Philadelphia church, where supporters honked their horns in approval.
“He knows that if you have a chance to speak up, he has no chance. But the American people will not be silenced,” he said.
Trump, hit by flurries of snow in Washington, Michigan, a city north of Detroit, wore his red cap with the words “Make America Great Again” when he promised a bustling crowd that he would lead the recovery from the pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 Americans and hit the economy.
“I am fulfilling the great return of the United States and we are not going to have any blockade,” Trump promised.
I never had anything like this
Biden criticized Trump for encouraging supporters after they harassed a Biden campaign bus in Texas.
A caravan of vehicles bearing Trump campaign flags surrounded the bus carrying campaign personnel on a highway on Friday, forcing the campaign to cancel two events.
“We’ve never had something like this. At least we’ve never had a president who thinks it’s a good thing,” Biden told reporters.
Trump retweeted a video of the incident Saturday, writing: “I LOVE TEXAS!”
In Michigan, he asked his followers if they had seen videos of “our people” on the bus.
“It was Trump Trump Trump and the American flag,” Trump said.
The FBI said Sunday it had opened an investigation into the Texas incident.
The president later criticized the investigation, tweeting: “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong.”
Biden is ahead 51% to 43% nationally in the latest Reuters / Ipsos poll, conducted October 27-29.
The race continues to be a turnaround in Florida, North Carolina and Arizona, Reuters / Ipsos polls showed, as Trump goes 7 percentage points in Pennsylvania and 10 points in Michigan and Wisconsin.
In her 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the real estate developer and reality TV personality turned politician was propelled to the White House by victories in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, states that for decades had passed into the Democratic column.
A record 92.2 million early votes have been cast, either in person or by mail, according to the US Elections Project, representing about 40 percent of eligible voters.
The early rise has led Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who manages the project, to predict a turnout rate of about 65 percent of eligible voters, the highest since 1908.
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