U.S. Election: Second judge dismisses Trump campaign’s absentee ballot lawsuit; Trump tweets ‘STOP THE COUNT!’ as Biden edges closer to victory
Two days after record numbers of Americans turned out to vote, Joe Biden is close to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to carry the White House after securing victories in Wisconsin and Michigan.
President Donald Trump's campaign put into action the legal strategy the president had signalled for weeks: attacking the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean his defeat.
Here are the latest updates:
2:53 pm. |Miami Herald Police in Florida have arrested a 61-year-old man who they say made online threats to kill supporters of President Donald Trump, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state's U.S. senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.
Richard Szala was arrested early Wednesday after police received information that Szala was leaving YouTube comments threatening to shoot and kill Trump supporters and his neighbour, Clearwater police said.
Besides threatening Florida's governor and Rubio and Scott, Szala also made threats to kill U.S. Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Clearwater Lt. Michael Walek said Thursday.
Also on the list: Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and Florida U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, according to Bay News 9.
When Szala was taken into custody, he confessed to making the online threats but told investigators he didn't mean it and that he was just frustrated with the Republican Party, Walek said.
Szala, who is registered to vote as a Democrat, was arrested and charged with making a false report for threatening to use a gun in a violent manner. He was released later Wednesday on a $10,000 bond.
2:25 p.m. | The Associated Press Joe Biden is getting virtual briefings on the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout from panels of experts, sticking to a routine he's had since March, even as the outcome of the presidential race remains in doubt.
The former vice-presidenttravelled Thursday afternoon to a theatre in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, where his campaign has set up a makeshift studio. He and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, often sit facing large screens while experts participate by video conference.
Biden has held similar public health and economic briefings about once a week since March while criticizing President Donald Trump's administration for the federal government's response to a pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans.
Journalists travelling with Biden were not allowed inside the briefing but saw him as he entered the theatre. He did not take questions.
2 p.m. | The Associated Press The Arizona Democratic Party has asked a court to let it participate in a lawsuit that alleges vote tabulation equipment in metro Phoenix was unable to record a voter's ballot because she completed it with a county-issued Sharpie pen.
A judge is holding a hearing Thursday in Phoenix in the lawsuit by voter Laurie Aguilera, who also alleged that ink from the marker bled through the back side of her ballot and that poll workers refused her request for a new ballot.
Aguilera is seeking a court order for all Maricopa County voters whose ballots were rejected as a result of using a Sharpie to be given a chance to fix their ballots. She also is asking for such voters to be able to be present while election officials count their ballots.
The Democrats say the lawsuit is based on the unconfirmed account of one voter and her request to monitor ballot processing could throw the processing of ballots in Arizona's largest county in disarray.
In a court filing, the party says Democratic voters could be disenfranchised if Aguilera and others were able to challenge a voter's intent in making ballot choices without knowing the applicable standards.
Arizona election officials have said voting with a Sharpie would have no impact on the votes being recorded by a tabulation machine.
1:55 p.m. | The Associated Press As the nation awaits results from Nevada, Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria says it could take until Saturday or Sunday before the state's largest county finishes tallying mail-in ballots that have been returned.
Gloria said Thursday at a press conference: Our goal here in Clark County is not to count fast. We want to make sure that we're being accurate."
Gloria says Clark County has at least 63,262 ballots left to count, including 34,743 returned in drop boxes on Election Day and 4,208 returned via the U.S. Postal Service. But as mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day continue to trickle in, Gloria said he had no way of knowing the total number of outstanding ballots.
He says, That's a number that I can't give you. I can't predict to you what's going to come through the U.S. mail."
Gloria says the fact that Nevada's six electoral votes could push Democrat Joe Biden beyond the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win the presidency reaffirmed the need to not rush the count.
He said the last day to count ballots is Nov. 12.
1:46 p.m. | The Associated Press The election scrambled seats in the House and Senate but ultimately left Congress much like it began, deeply split as voters resisted big changes despite the heated race at the top of the ticket for the White House.
It's an outcome that dampens Democratic demands for a bold new agenda, emboldens Republicans and almost ensures partisan gridlock regardless of who wins the presidency. Or perhaps, as some say, it provides a rare opening for modest across-the-aisle co-operation.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on track to keep control of the Democratic House, but saw her majority shrinking and her leadership called into question. Control of the Senate tilted Republicans' way as they fended off an onslaught of energized challengers, though a few races remained undecided Wednesday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he's confident no matter who ends up running the government" they'll be trying to overcome all that and get results."
The dismal outcome for congressional Democrats put in question the ambitious plans for legislative overhauls pushed by the party, eager for a sweep of Washington government. Even if Democrats capture the White House and a narrowly split Senate, Pelosi's leverage to force deal-making on her terms will be diminished by her House losses.
1:30 p.m. | The Associated Press A Michigan judge has dismissed a lawsuit by President Donald Trump's campaign in a dispute over whether Republican challengers had access to the handling of absentee ballots.
Judge Cynthia Stephens noted that the lawsuit was filed late Wednesday afternoon, just hours before the last ballots were counted. She also said the defendant, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, was the wrong person to sue because she doesn't control the logistics of local ballot counting, even if she is the state's chief election officer.
The Associated Press called the Michigan presidential election for Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday evening. Trump won the state in 2016.
The lawsuit claimed Benson, a Democrat, was allowing absentee ballots to be counted without teams of bipartisan observers as well as challengers. She was accused of undermining the constitutional right of all Michigan voters ... to participate in fair and lawful elections."
Benson, through state attorneys, denied the allegations. Much of the dispute centred on the TCF Center in Detroit where pro-Trump protesters gathered while absentee ballots were being counted.
12:40 p.m. | The Associated press As Democrat Joe Biden inched closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, President Donald Trump's campaign put into action the legal strategy the president had signalled for weeks: attacking the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean his defeat.
Democrats scoffed at the legal challenges the president's campaign filed Wednesday in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those largely demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted.
Early Thursday, a separate Trump campaign lawsuit in Georgia over concerns about 53 absentee ballots was dismissed by a judge after county elections officials testified that all of those ballots had been received on time.
Biden campaign attorney Bob Bauer on Thursday called the Trump campaign's lawsuits meritless.
I want to emphasize that for their purposes these lawsuits don't have to have merit. That's not the purpose. ... It is to create an opportunity for them to message falsely about what's taking place in the electoral process," Bauer said, accusing the Trump campaign of continually alleging irregularities, failures of the system and fraud without any basis."
But Trump campaign officials accused Democrats of trying to steal the election, despite no evidence anything of the sort was taking place.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, in a call with reporters Thursday morning, said that every night the president goes to bed with a lead" and every night new votes are mysteriously found in a sack."
12:31 p.m. | The Associated press Control of the Senate hung in balance Thursday, a cliffhanger after Republicans trounced Democratic challengers in crucial states but failed to lock down the seats needed to retain their tenuous majority.
At least one race in Georgia is headed to a January runoff. Contests in three other states remain undecided, leaving the chamber now deadlocked 48-48. An outcome may not be known until the new year.
With the presidential race between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden also undecided, the Senate is in limbo because the vice-president of the eventual winner's party would serve as a tie-breaker in a split chamber.
The counting continued in Georgia, where GOP Sen. David Perdue was trying to hold off Democrat Jon Ossoff in a multi-candidate race that could also go to a runoff if neither candidate clears the 50% threshold to win.
There already is a Jan. 5 runoff in the state's other Senate race. GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler will face Democrat Raphael Warnock, a Black pastor at the church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, after they emerged as top vote-getters, but failed to clear the majority threshold.
In North Carolina, GOP Sen. Thom Tillis hoped to prevail over Democrat Cal Cunningham, whose sexting affair with a public relations specialist has clouded the race.
Republicans were confident they would keep Alaska, where GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan was challenged by Democratic newcomer Al Gross, a doctor.
11:59 a.m. | The Associated Press Donald Trump spent much of Wednesday and Thursday in the White House residence, huddling with advisers and fuming at media coverage showing his Democratic rival picking up battlegrounds. Trump used his Twitter feed to falsely claim victory in several key states and amplify unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Democratic gains as absentee and early votes were tabulated. Aides did not say when he next planned to appear in public.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the president would formally request a Wisconsin recount, citing irregularities" in several counties. And the campaign said it was filing suit in Michigan and Pennsylvania to halt ballot counting on grounds that it wasn't given proper access to observe. Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said additional legal action was expected in Nevada.
We will literally be going through every single ballot," he said of the hotly contested state.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of votes were still to be counted in Pennsylvania, and Trump's campaign said it was moving to intervene in existing Supreme Court litigation over counting mail-in ballots there.
11:49 a.m. | The Associated Press A judge in Georgia has dismissed a lawsuit by the state Republican Party and President Donald Trump's campaign that asked him to ensure a coastal county was following state laws on processing absentee ballots.
Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass did not provide an explanation for his decision Thursday at the close of a roughly one-hour hearing. The county includes the heavily Democratic city of Savannah.
The suit had raised concerns about 53 absentee ballots that poll observers said were not part of an original batch of ballots. County elections officials testified that all 53 ballots had been received on time.
11:40 a.m. | The Associated Press Joe Biden's campaign is expressing optimism at the ultimate result of the election but warning supporters to stay patient and stay calm" as vote counting continues.
Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said Thursday on a briefing call with reporters that the story of today is going to be a very positive story" for their campaign, but cautioned that as the counting continues, we need to allow it to get done and get done well."
She says the campaign expects their lead to fluctuate in some states as more votes come in.
O'Malley Dillon also charged that legal challenges by President Donald Trump's campaign to halt vote counting in some states and seek a recount in Wisconsin are a flailing strategy" that are an attempt to distract and delay" from the results of the election.
The Associated Press is not calling the presidential race yet because neither candidate has secured the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory. Several key states were too early to call - Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada.
11:31 a.m. | The Associated Press A handful of pivotal states remained in play Thursday in the tightly contested U.S. presidential race. Here, The Associated Press reviews them and examines the reasons why they could still go to either Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Joe Biden:
GEORGIA: Outstanding ballots left to be counted in counties where Biden has performed well.
THE BACKGROUND: Early Wednesday, Trump prematurely claimed he carried Georgia.
It's ... clear that we have won Georgia. We're up by 2.5%, or 117,000 (votes) with only 7% (of the vote) left" to count, Trump said during an early morning appearance at the White House. He also said he planned to contest the U.S. presidential election before the Supreme Court. It was unclear exactly what legal action he might pursue.
The race is too early to call. With an estimated 99% of the vote counted there, Trump's lead over Biden has shrunk to about 18,000 votes. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Thursday morning that there were approximately 61,000 ballots still outstanding.
That includes mailed ballots from population-dense counties in the Atlanta metro region that lean Democratic. Biden is overperforming Hillary Clinton's 2016 showing in those counties, including in their more upscale suburban reaches.
NEVADA: Race too early to call.
THE BACKGROUND: About 75% of the votes are in and Biden leads by less than 8,000 votes.
But there are outstanding ballots left to be counted in the coming days. Under state law, they can still be accepted so long as they were postmarked by Election Day, on Nov. 3.
Trump narrowly lost Nevada in 2016 as the state has trended toward the Democrats in the past decade. The last Republican presidential contender to win the state was George W. Bush in 2004.
NORTH CAROLINA: Race too early to call. Ballots left to count.
THE BACKGROUND: Trump prematurely claimed early Wednesday that he won the state.
We've clearly won North Carolina, where we're up 1.7%, 77,000 votes with only approximately 5% left. They can't catch us," he said during an appearance at the White House. Trump also said he planned to contest the U.S. presidential election before the Supreme Court. It was unclear, exactly, what legal action he might pursue.
Though Trump is correct that he held a nearly 77,000-vote lead, which he maintained Thursday morning, the race is too early to call with up to 116,000 mail ballots left to count, as well as the potential of thousands of provisional ballots.
As long as those ballots are postmarked by Nov. 3, state election officials have until Nov. 12 to count them. And when it comes to mail ballots, Biden was outperforming Trump. That means the ballots yet to be counted could give Biden a lead.
PENNSYLVANIA: Hundreds of thousands of votes left to be counted.
THE BACKGROUND: Pennsylvania is among a handful of battleground states Trump and Biden are narrowly contesting, and there were hundreds of thousands of votes left to be counted Thursday morning.
Trump, who held a 675,000-vote lead early Wednesday, prematurely declared victory in the state.
We're winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount. We're up 690,000 votes in Pennsylvania. These aren't even close. It's not like, Oh, it's close,'" Trump said during an appearance at the White House.
By Thursday morning, his lead had slipped to about 136,000 - and the race is destined to get tighter.
One reason is because elections officials are not allowed to process mail-in ballots until Election Day under state law. It's a form of voting that has skewed heavily in Biden's favour after Trump spent months claiming without proof that voting by mail would lead to widespread voter fraud.
Mail ballots from across the state that were counted by late Wednesday overwhelming broke Biden's direction.
10:57 a.m. In a Thursday morning news conference, election officials in Georgia noted that a recount is possible if the results are within half a percentage point. There are approximately 60,000 ballots left to be counted.
10:44 a.m. | The New York Times
President Donald Trump's lead in Pennsylvania has plummeted to 2 percentage points as of Thursday morning, as the mail absentee ballot count proceeded briskly across the state.
There is every indication that Biden remains on track to pull ahead when all of the votes are in and counted, whenever that may be.
So far, Biden has been winning absentee votes, 77% to 22%, according to the Pennsylvania secretary of state. At that pace, he needs only 288,000 more mail votes before taking the lead. By my count, there are about 500,000 mail ballots left. The secretary of state reported a total of 2.6 million absentee ballots cast as of Tuesday, and so far 2.1 million absentee votes have been counted. If Biden won those 500,000 ballots by the same pace, he would end with a lead of about 100,000 votes in the state. That's a pretty decent cushion.
That estimate may also be conservative. For one, the remaining mail ballots are disproportionately in Democratic counties, so he'll probably do better than 77% to 21%.
(Updated with higher ballot number) 10:38 a.m. | The Associated Press Arizona state officials say there are about 450,000 ballots still to be counted in the Western battleground.
The AP says it is monitoring that vote count as it comes in. The AP has called the presidential race in Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden.
AP executive editor Sally Buzbee says: The Associated Press continues to watch and analyze vote count results from Arizona. We will follow the facts in all cases."
Biden holds a 2.35 percentage point lead over Trump in Arizona, an advantage of about 68,000 votes.
The vast majority of the ballots yet to be counted are from Maricopa County, the most populous area of the state.
10:03 a.m. | The Associated Press Police in Seattle and Portland, Oregon arrested more than a dozen people as hundreds took to the streets to demand a full count of all presidential election votes and a halt to President Donald Trump's court challenges to stop counts in some key battleground states, officials said.
Seven people were arrested on Capitol Hill in Seattle and one person who was being arrested for allegedly damaging property was taken to a hospital after experiencing a medical episode," police said in a statement early Thursday. Others were arrested on suspicion of obstruction, pedestrian interference, property damage, resisting arrest and assaulting an officer.
Police said it was unclear whether the person's medical issue was related to the arrest. The person was initially hospitalized in critical condition but later upgraded to serous condition, Harborview Medical Center spokeswoman Susan Gregg said Thursday morning.
In Portland, protesters smashed windows at businesses, hurled objects including a Molotov cocktail at officers and police made at least 10 arrests, according to a statement from the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office.
Officers seized multiple firearms, ammunition, a knife, commercial and consumer grade fireworks, body armour and gas masks from people who were arrested, a sheriff's office statement said.
9:40 a.m. | The Associated Press With Joe Biden edging closer to unseating him from the White House, President Donald Trump says he wants to put a halt to vote counting.
The extraordinary statement by an incumbent president to voice support for ceasing the count of legally cast votes came in a Thursday morning tweet, saying only: STOP THE COUNT!"
Elections are run by individual state, county and local governments. Trump's public comments have no impact on the tallying of votes across the country.
So far, the vote count across the country has been conducted efficiently and without evidence of any misconduct, despite Trump's public complaints.
Trump's comments come as his campaign has filed legal action in several states to try to stop vote counting, claiming a lack of transparency. Still, Trump's campaign has held out hope that continued counting in Arizona could overcome a Biden lead in the state.
8:36 a.m. | The Associated Press: The head of an international delegation monitoring the U.S. election says his team has no evidence to support President Donald Trump's claims about alleged fraud involving mail-in absentee ballots.
Michael Georg Link, a German lawmaker who heads an observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told German public broadcaster rbb Thursday that on the election day itself, we couldn't see any violations" at the U.S. polling places they visited.
Link said he was very surprised" by Trump's claims about postal ballot fraud because the United States has a long history of this method of voting going back to the 19th century.
We looked into this. We found no violations of the rules whatsoever," Link told rbb.
He said neither U.S. election observers nor media found any evidence of fraud either, though the OSCE team on Wednesday repeated long-standing concerns about disenfranchisement of some voters and the distorting effects of campaign finance laws.
7:43 a.m. | The Associated Press: Perhaps only in Florida is a loss by fewer than 4 percentage points considered a public drubbing.
In a state famous for razor-thin margins, the size of former Vice-President Joe Biden's loss to President Donald Trump was humiliating for Democrats and sent many searching for answers to how they failed to close the deal with voters - again.
Democrats zeroed in on two clear explanations: Biden didn't connect with the state's Latino voters, performing particularly poorly with Cuban voters in South Florida. They also second-guessed the party's decision to freeze in-person organizing during the worst of the pandemic, a decision that set them back in reaching voters.
4:15 a.m. | The Associated Press: President Donald Trump's campaign put into action the legal strategy the president had signalled for weeks: attacking the integrity of the voting process in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, states where the result could mean his defeat.
The new filings, joining existing Republican legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, and raised absentee ballot concerns, the campaign said.
The Associated Press called Michigan for Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday. The AP has not called Nevada, Pennsylvania or Georgia.
The Trump campaign also is seeking to intervene in a Pennsylvania case at the Supreme Court that deals with whether ballots received up to three days after the election can be counted, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark said. Trump's campaign also announced that it would ask for a recount in Wisconsin, a state the AP called for Biden on Wednesday afternoon.
4:15 a.m. | The Associated Press: Democrat Joe Biden was pushing closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to carry the White House, securing victories in the blue wall" battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowing President Donald Trump's path.
Two days after Election Day, neither candidate had amassed the votes needed to win the White House. But Biden's victories in the Great Lakes states mean that he is one battleground state away - any would do - from becoming president-elect.
Trump, with 214 electoral votes, faced a much higher hurdle. To reach 270, he needed to claim all four remaining battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada.
With millions of votes yet to be tabulated, Biden already had received more than 71 million votes, the most in history.
3:16 a.m. | The Associated Press: Dozens of angry supporters of President Donald Trump converged on vote-counting centres in Detroit and Phoenix as the returns went against him Wednesday in the two key states, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete tally of the ballots in the still-undecided election took to the streets in cities across the U.S.
Stop the count!" the Trump supporters chanted in Detroit. Stop the steal!" they said in Phoenix.
The protests came as the president insisted without evidence that there were major problems with the voting and the ballot counting, especially with mail-in votes, and as Republicans filed suit in various states over the election.
Protesters in Phoenix were joined by Trump ally Rep. Paul Gosar. They filled much of the parking lot at the Maricopa County election centre, and members of the crowd chanted, Fox News sucks!" in anger over the network declaring Joe Biden the winner in Arizona.