Joe Biden said he felt “really good” about Michigan and Wisconsin
Washington:
Americans woke up on Wednesday not knowing who the next US president would be, as votes were still counted in six key states that could tip the hotly contested election between incumbent Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Joe Biden.
Fueling fears of a constitutional crisis, Trump prematurely declared victory overnight and threatened to demand intervention from the Supreme Court to stop the vote count, but it continued nonetheless.
“We won this election,” the 74-year-old president told cheering supporters in the East Room of the White House before the final count of the votes was completed. “It’s a fraud on the American public.”
The Biden campaign called Trump’s claim to victory “outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect” and “an outright attempt to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”
“The tally will not stop. It will continue until every duly cast vote is counted,” he said. “If the president follows through on his threat to go to court to try to prevent the correct compilation of votes, we have legal teams ready to deploy to resist this effort.”
The outcome appears to depend on the results of six states where no winners have yet been declared: Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
At 9:00 a.m. (2:00 p.m. GMT), Biden had a slim lead in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin while Trump led in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
But state election officials have warned that with tens of thousands of outstanding ballots in some states – millions in others – the races could change.
The tight race for the White House and the recriminations evoked memories of the 2000 election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
The Bush vs Gore race, which relied on a handful of votes in Florida, ended up in the Supreme Court, which halted a recount while Bush led.
A deluge of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic has slowed the vote count in some states this year, many of which did not start counting the ballots until Tuesday.
Michigan officials, for example, have said they hope all votes will be counted by the end of the day, while in Pennsylvania officials have said it could take several more days.
“If all goes well, we will have the total results in the next few days,” Al Schmidt, municipal commissioner for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city, told CNN.
“But Pennsylvania allows the reception and counting of votes until Friday and three days after the election.
“So we can’t count what we haven’t got yet.”
Participation record
The US Elections Project estimated the total turnout at a record 160 million voters, including more than 101.1 anticipated voters, of which 65.2 million voted by mail.
In an election that took place in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 230,000 lives in the United States, Trump appears to have avoided a Democratic wave predicted by some polls.
But it was not known, Wednesday morning, which candidate would capture the 270 votes necessary for victory in the electoral college that determines the winner of the presidential race.
Trump stepped onto the podium at the White House after 2 a.m. and said he would go to the Supreme Court because “we want all votes to stop.”
The vote was already over by the time Trump started speaking and he appeared to be calling on the highest court in the country to stop the vote count.
Trump protested the postal ballots for months, accusing without evidence that they could be fraudulent.
Biden had previously warned that the vote count would take a while as he saluted his own supporters at a socially remote rally in his home state of Delaware.
“We believe we are on the right track to winning this election,” said the 77-year-old former vice president and senator from Delaware. “Keep the faith, guys, we’re gonna win this.”
Over the past four years, Trump has often been quick to say he was being treated unfairly, but even a few of his fellow Republicans have expressed concern over his dramatic intervention.
“Stop. Full stop. The votes will be counted and you will win or lose. And America will accept that. Patience is a virtue,” tweeted Adam Kinzinger, a re-elected Republican congressman.
“I don’t agree with what he did tonight,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who helped Trump prepare for his first debate against Biden.
“There is simply no basis to make this point tonight,” Christie told ABC News. “There just isn’t any.”
“Constitutional crisis”?
Foreign countries have also sounded the alarm, with German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer warning that Trump could create a “constitutional crisis”.
Biden is the first Democrat in 24 years to win Arizona, capitalizing on the changing demographics of the Southwestern state and the popularity of astronaut Mark Kelly, who won a Senate seat held by a Republican .
But no other state immediately flipped, and Trump won a top prize in Florida, where his hard line against Latin American leftists helped him make inroads among Cuban Americans.
Democratic hopes have been stifled to tour Texas, a vital Republican stronghold for Trump, and Ohio.
Biden, as expected, comfortably took home the biggest prize of all, California, as well as New York, and easily kept Minnesota and New Hampshire, two states where Hillary Clinton in 2016 had won only victories over Trump.
Attention has again turned to three states that elected Trump four years ago – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – with ballots still waiting to be counted in Democratic stronghold cities of Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee.
Biden said he felt “really good” about Michigan and Wisconsin and expressed confidence in Pennsylvania, where he was born.
Biden said he was also competitive in Georgia – a state that until recently did not appear to be on the line – as election workers in his largest city of Atlanta ceased to count overnight after the break-up of a pipe.
Experts have been warning for weeks that this year’s election results will take time – and have expressed concern that Trump will cause chaos, even violence, by calling the process into question.
Although there were no immediate reports of unrest, shops were closed across the capital, Washington.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
