Name: President reasserts false claims about electoral fraud – as it happened
Brand: theguardian.com
SKU: theguardian-com-809
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

President reasserts false claims about electoral fraud – as it happened

preview

This article is more than 1 year oldThis article is more than 1 year oldWe’re closing this live blog now and moving to a fresh one. Join us for all the latest news, results and reaction:The Associated Press, which the Guardian relies on to project election results due to their generally cautious approach, has responded to Donald Trump’s false claim that he has won the election: explains: What usually happens?US presidential elections are not won by the national popular vote. The winner in each state collects its electoral college votes – and needs a total of 270 to take the White House.In most elections the result is clear – although not officially confirmed – by the end of the night. Major American media outlets “call” each state for one of the candidates. While not based on the final vote count, that projection is almost invariably accurate.This means an accurate tally of electoral college votes can be made and a winner declared. In 2016, that happened at 2.30am in Washington when Trump reached the required 270.Why is that not happening this time?Mainly because of the Covid-19 pandemic, large numbers of voters – about 68% of the total, compared with 34% in 2016 – cast their ballots early, including by post.Counting postal votes is slower because voter and witness signatures and addresses must be checked, and ballots smoothed out before being fed into counting machines. Some states start that verification process long before election day, meaning the count itself can get under way as soon as polls close. Others, however, do not allow that.Which states are we talking about?Five states have yet to be called: Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Alaska. Several news organizations, including the Associated Press and Fox News’ decision desk, have called Arizona for . The Trump campaign is arguing, however, that call was made too early. Its next update is not due until 9pm ET on Thursday.Alaska will end up in the Republican column with near certainty.Pennsylvania officials say they expect most votes will be counted by Friday.The Democratic challenger is narrowly ahead in Nevada, with only Democratic-leaning late postal ballots left to tally. Officials have said no more results will be released in Nevada until midday ET on Thursday.In North Carolina, while Trump is the clear favourite, the state accepts postal ballots until 12 November – although that is expected to make little difference.What else is complicating matters?Roughly half of all states will accept postal votes that arrive after election day as long as they carry a postmark of no later than 3 November, so postal delays may mean some ballots are not processed until days later: Pennsylvania has said results will not be considered complete until the deadline of Friday.There has also reportedly been an increase in the number of provisional ballots cast by people who asked for a postal vote but then decided to go to the polling station in person instead. These need careful checking to make sure no one has voted twice.Read more:Mike Pence, who did not stand by the president at his presser today, has nevertheless endorsed Trump’s lies. “I Stand With President ,” Pence tweeted shortly after the president concluded his remarks. “We must count every LEGAL vote.” Elections officials are, indeed, endeavoring to count every legal vote, even as the president, vice president and their supporters confuse “legal” and “favorable”. TV news networks including ABC, CBS and MSNBC stopped broadcasting the president’s remarks – which amounted to a series of un-democratic lies. As MSNBC cut away from the White House, after the president falsely declared victory, anchor Brian Williams commented, “Here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States.” Trump is falsely claiming that Republican election count observers are being blocked or denied access in Philadelphia and Detroit. They are not.Here’s election law expert David Becker: The president is, as Kellyanne Conway warned us, now airing grievances about the political polling ahead of election day. The idea that these polls, which found Biden leading in key swing states, were deliberately wrong is baseless. The president is also, once again, complaining that votes are being counted, falsely referring to legally-cast mail-in ballots as illegitimate. He is lying that “they” are trying to “steal” the election, and claiming that he “won” Michigan and Wisconsin – states he has lost. He has begun by illegitimately, prematurely declaring a victory – launching into a series of lies about the elections.“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” he said, falsely. On Fox News, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said is expected to talk about the “the state of the race from his perspective”. Trump is also planning to speak about what he calls “suppression polls” which showed Biden leading in key swing states ahead of election day. Those polls made his supporters feel like his candidacy was a lost cause, the president has argued. The idea is nonsensical – to the extent that polls have any effect on voter behavior, they tend to do the opposite – leaving supporters of the leading candidate feeling complacent, and motivating the supporters of the trailing candidate to show up and vote.In Georgia, approximately 36,300 ballots remain outstanding. Fewer than 9,500 votes separate Donald Trump and Joe Biden as the president’s tenuous lead in the state continues to shrink. Biden remains 6 electoral votes away from the 270 needed to win the election. If Biden overtakes Trump in Georgia, its 16 electoral votes would put him well over that threshold.More than 150,000 mail-in ballots were not delivered by election day, according to a Washington Post of agency data. More than 12,000 of the undelivered ballots caught up in US Postal Service facilities are in states that remain too close to call. The Post reports: Despite assurances from Postal Service leaders that agency officials were conducting daily sweeps for misplaced ballots, the mail service acknowledged in a court filing Thursday that thousands of ballots had not been processed in time, and that more ballots were processed Wednesday than on Election Day.The number of mailed ballots the Postal Service did not deliver by Election Day is expected to grow as more data is released in the coming days. Some election experts worry such delays could run up against even more generous ballot acceptance windows that some states have granted.In several swing states, late ballots will still be counted as long as they were postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday, according to state law. They include Nevada, where 4,518 ballots arrived after Election Day, as well as North Carolina (2,958) and Pennsylvania, (3,439). But in other states — such as Arizona, where 864 ballots were delayed, and Georgia, where 853 were delayed — votes that did not reach election officials by Nov. 3 will be disqualifiedBecause the counts are not done in those states, it is unclear whether undelivered ballots would have made a difference in deciding the presidential election. But the delivery failures highlight the risks in relying on the mail service to deliver ballots close to Election Day.Read more . This will be the president’s first address since his post-election day speech, which was replete with lies and inaccuracies. As his path to victory in the election narrows, the president has grown increasingly frustrated as he continues to baselessly allege fraud and demand that officials stop counting votes. Earlier today, Politico that the leader who prematurely declared victory has “settled on a plan for him to take full advantage of his existing perch at the White House to look as presidential as possible”. As his campaign mounts legal challenges to sow doubt on the legitimacy of the election system, Trump is expected to resume travel and move forward with base-pleasing executive orders.

This article is more than 1 year oldThis article is more than 1 year oldWe’re closing this live blog now and moving to a fresh one. Join us for all the latest news, results and reaction:The Associated Press, which the Guardian relies on to project election results due to their generally cautious approach, has responded to Donald Trump’s false claim that he has won the election: explains: What usually happens?US presidential elections are not won by the national popular vote. The winner in each state collects its electoral college votes – and needs a total of 270 to take the White House.In...

public

Maanvi Singh is the Guardian's West Coast political reporter, based in San Francisco.

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/maanvi-singh

Maanvi Singh

Joan E Greve is a politics breaking news reporter for Guardian US, based in Washington.

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/joan-greve

Joan E Greve

TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and Guardian Unlimited, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

President reasserts false claims about electoral fraud – as it happened

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS