US election: Joe Biden has reached 264 electoral votes against 214 so far for Donald Trump. (File)
Washington:
U.S. Democrat Joe Biden took a big step on Wednesday to capture the White House, with victories in Michigan and Wisconsin bringing him closer to the majority, but President Donald Trump responded with a rant alleging mass fraud and demanding the stop counting votes.
In a brief speech on national television, flanked by American flags and his vice president Kamala Harris, Biden said he was not yet declaring victory, but said that “when the tally is over, we think we will be the winners “.
Returning the battlefields of northern Michigan and Wisconsin, Biden has achieved 264 electoral votes against Trump’s 214 so far. Adding in the six from Nevada, where he is narrowly ahead, he would hit the magical 270 needed to win the White House.
Contrary to Trump’s increasingly passionate rhetoric of being deceived, Biden has sought to project calm, reaching out to a nation torn apart by four years of polarizing leadership and traumatized by the Covid pandemic. 19.
“I know how deep and hard the opposing views are in our country on so many things,” said Biden, 77.
“But I know it too: in order to progress we have to stop treating our adversaries as enemies. We are not enemies. What unites us as Americans is so much stronger than anything that can tear us apart.”
US presidential elections are decided not by popular vote, but by obtaining a majority in the State-by-State Electoral College, which has 538 members.
U.S. media called Michigan for Biden after he took the lead of nearly 70,000 with 97% of the ballots counted. Earlier, Biden claimed Wisconsin, with a narrower but insurmountable lead.
This, along with Arizona – another Trump state that Biden overthrew – put the Democrat at their fingertips to make Trump a president for a term.
Results were still being compiled in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania – all close contests, as well as in Republican Alaska reliably. Counting has been complicated by the coronavirus pandemic and the record number of mailed ballots which may take longer to process.
Trump claims he was cheated
However, Trump, 74, unilaterally claimed victory and made it clear that he would not accept the reported results, issuing unprecedented complaints – unsubstantiated by any evidence – of fraud.
“Last night I was ruling, often solidly, in many key states, in almost all cases Democrat-led and controlled,” Trump tweeted. “Then, one by one, they began to magically disappear as the surprise ballots were counted.”
Trump’s campaign announced a lawsuit to try to suspend the vote count in Michigan, where it said her team had been denied proper access to observe the vote count.
Donald Trump unilaterally claimed victory and made it clear that he would not accept the reported results.
The campaign said it was also continuing to count the votes in Pennsylvania – after the president called overnight for the Supreme Court to intervene to exclude the processing of mail ballots after the polls closed. vote.
And he demanded a recount in Wisconsin, citing “irregularities.”
The president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, spoke to media in Philadelphia, Pa., Accusing Democrats of sending fraudulent ballots. He also provided no evidence.
“This is how they intend to win,” said Giuliani. “We’re not going to let them get away with it.”
Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said they won in Pennsylvania, though the outcome is still being calculated, and he rejected the call for Biden to win in Arizona.
Campaign adviser Jason Miller told reporters that by the end of the week Trump’s re-election “will be clear to the whole nation.”
“We must be patient”
Unless one candidate gets enough States for an all-out victory sooner, the fight could end in Pennsylvania, which will likely experience the most complicated counting process.
Here, Trump had about 500,000 votes ahead with about 78% of the vote counted, but votes were expected from strongly Democratic parts of the state, vowing to level things off.
“We have to be patient,” Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said. “We may not know the results today.
“There are millions of postal ballots,” he said. “They are going to be counted accurately and they will be fully counted.”
The Democratic governor ignored White House criticism of the slow vote count and said “our democracy is being tested in this election.”
“Pennsylvania will have a fair election,” he said. “And this election will be free from outside influences.”
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.
That race, which relied on a handful of votes in Florida, ultimately ended up in the Supreme Court, which halted a recount while Bush led.
The US Elections Project estimated the total turnout at a record 160 million voters, including more than 101.1 million anticipated voters, of which 65.2 million voted by mail.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
