Democrat Joe Biden expanded his narrow leads over President Donald Trump in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Georgia on Friday, putting him on the verge of winning the White House three days after polls closed.
Biden has a 253 to 214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote that determines the winner, according to Edison Research. Winning Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes would put the former vice president over the 270 he needs to secure the presidency.
Biden would also win the election if he prevails in two of the three other key states where he held narrow leads on Friday: Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. Like Pennsylvania, all three were still processing ballots on Friday.
As Biden inched closer to triumph, he was expected to address the nation on Friday evening, according to a person familiar with his plans. The remarks could be a victory speech; a Biden aide said he could be declared the winner within hours.
In both Pennsylvania and Georgia, Biden overtook Trump on the strength of mail-in ballots that were cast in urban Democratic strongholds including Philadelphia and Atlanta.
Hundreds of Democrats gathered outside Philadelphia's downtown vote-counting site, wearing yellow shirts reading "Count Every Vote." In Detroit, a crowd of Trump supporters, some armed, protested outside the counting location, waving flags and chanting, "Fight!"
Earlier with his re-election chances fading as more votes are counted in a handful of battleground states, Trump launched an extraordinary assault on the country's democratic process from the White House, falsely claiming the election was being "stolen" from him.
Offering no evidence, Trump lambasted election workers and alleged fraud in the states where results from a dwindling set of uncounted votes are pushing Biden nearer to victory.
"This is a case where they're trying to steal an election," Trump said from the White House on Thursday (local time).
The President again - despite evidence to the contrary - declared victory, saying he had won "easily" if only legal votes were counted.
He insisted "big media, big money, big tech" were trying to steal the election from him.
Several news networks cut away from Trump, who spoke for about 15 minutes in the White House briefing room before leaving without taking questions.
Biden, meanwhile, saw his lead in Arizona contract from 93,000 to 65,000; he was ahead in Nevada by only 11,000 votes on Thursday.
Most major television networks gave Biden a 253 to 214 lead in Electoral College votes, which are largely determined by state population, after he captured the crucial battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday. To capture the White House, a candidate must amass at least 270 votes.
Biden would become the next president by winning Pennsylvania, or by winning two out of the trio of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Trump's likeliest path appeared narrower - he needed to hang onto Pennsylvania and Georgia while overtaking Biden in either Nevada or Arizona.
As demonstrators marched in several US cities for a second straight day, the election lay in the hands of civil employees who were methodically counting hundreds of thousands of ballots, many of which were sent by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump held 214 electoral votes and had deployed Republican lawyers and campaign officials to begin a legal assault against Democratic votes in key states.
BIDEN CALLS FOR CALM
Biden said on Thursday that he had no doubt he would defeat Trump and win the presidency, but asked everyone to stay calm as votes were counted.
"We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners. So, I ask everyone to stay calm. ... The process is working," Biden told reporters, referring to his running mate Senator Kamala Harris.
Nevada, which has the six votes Biden would need to secure a win, remained undecided. It was one of the states Democrat Hillary Clinton captured in 2016.
The counting and court challenges set the stage for days if not weeks of uncertainty before December 8, the deadline to resolve election disputes. The president is sworn into office on January 20, 2021.
JUDGES THROW OUT TRUMP LAWSUITS
Trump's campaign lost court rulings in the closely-contested states of Georgia and Michigan on Thursday, even as it vowed to bring a new lawsuit challenging what it called voting irregularities in Nevada.
In the Georgia case, the campaign alleged 53 late-arriving ballots were mixed with on-time ballots. In Michigan, it had sought to stop votes from being counted and obtain greater access to the tabulation process.
State judges tossed out both the suits on Thursday.
Judge James Bass, a superior court judge in Georgia, said there was "no evidence" that the ballots in question were invalid.
In the Michigan case, Judge Cynthia Stephens said: "I have no basis to find that there is a substantial likelihood of success on the merits."
Trump allies alleged that there had been voting irregularities in Nevada's populous Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment on the Michigan and Georgia rulings.
The President appears to have grown more upset as his leads in some states have diminished or evaporated during the counting. On Thursday morning, he weighed in on Twitter, writing, "STOP THE COUNT!" and "STOP THE FRAUD!" although he has no authority over ballot counting.
Trump, who has often relished legal battles during his long, turbulent, business career, was at the White House, working the phones and monitoring developments on television, two Trump advisers said. He has been talking to state governors as well as close friends and advisers and dispatched some of this closest advisers out in the field to fight for him.
At a news conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt and other Trump campaign surrogates, including former administration official Richard Grenell, gave no evidence to support their allegations of irregularities and did not answer questions from reporters.
"We believe that there are dead voters that have been counted. We are also confident that there are thousands of people whose votes have been counted that have moved out of Clark County during the pandemic," Laxalt said.
He said a lawsuit would be filed in federal court to ask the judge to "stop the counting of improper votes."
Joe Gloria, an election official in Clark County, told reporters there was no evidence of improper ballots being processed.
Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden's campaign, called the various Trump lawsuits a "meritless" distraction and said the strategy was designed to undermine the integrity of the electoral process.
"This is part of a broader misinformation campaign that involves some political theatre," he said on Thursday. "They’re intended to give the Trump campaign the opportunity to argue the vote count should stop. It is not going to stop."
Election legal experts have said Trump's legal strategy is unlikely to have a decisive impact on the outcome of the election.
Trump has repeatedly said that he expects the US Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority including three justices he appointed, to have a key role.
But it is unlikely the court would have the final word in any decisive way and any challenge would have to make its way through the usual court process, legal experts say.
In Pennsylvania, where Trump is narrowly leading but Biden is making gains, the Trump campaign and other Republicans have already filed various legal challenges.
An appeals court in Pennsylvania on Thursday ordered that Trump campaign officials be allowed to more closely observe ballot processing in Philadelphia, which led to a brief delay in the count.
Pennsylvania Democrats on Thursday filed papers in the US Supreme Court saying although they would not oppose the Trump campaign's bid to intervene in a pending appeal in which Republicans seek to block late-arriving mail-in ballots in the state, it was premature for the court to act on the motion.
UNUSUAL PRESIDENTIAL RACE
At stake is whether to give Trump and his "America First" policies four more years in office after a tumultuous first term or turn to Biden, a figure on the national stage for a half century who promises to deliver steadiness at home and repair alliances overseas.
One of the most unusual presidential races in modern US history was held amid the pandemic, which has killed more than 234,000 Americans and left millions more out of work. Concern about the virus caused a surge in voting by mail, with the laborious counting contributing to the delayed results.
The exceedingly close election has underscored the political polarisation in the United States and the deep divisions along racial, socioeconomic, religious and generational lines as well as between urban and rural areas.
Despite Trump's allegations of fraud and an unsubstantiated charge that Democrats are trying to "steal" the election, US election experts say fraud in balloting is rare.
Thursday marked a second day of peaceful election-related protests as demonstrators rallied in cities including Philadelphia, Washington, Phoenix and Detroit. Some groups, mainly Democrats, rallied around the slogan to "count every vote."
Some Trump supporters countered with cries to "protect the vote" in support of his campaign's efforts to have some categories of ballots, including some votes submitted by mail, discarded.
About 200 Trump supporters, some armed with rifles and handguns, gathered outside an election office in Phoenix on Wednesday following unsubstantiated rumours that votes were not being counted.
Biden had drawn about 3.6 million more votes than Trump nationwide. Trump defeated Democrat Clinton in 2016 after winning crucial battleground states and securing the Electoral College win even though she won about 3 million more votes nationwide.
With NZ Herald
