Biden’s lead grows in Pennsylvania to more than 17,000 votes as he closes in on the White House –
Joe Biden DELAYS his address to the nation as he waits for Pennsylvania’s result and the Supreme Court orders state to set aside late mail-in ballots – while Trump makes a comeback in Arizona and warns rival not to ‘wrongfully claim victory’
- Joe Biden is still expected to speak at some point tonight, regardless of whether the race is called in his favor
- He’s currently on the cusp of winning the presidency with his lead 27,000-vote lead in the swing state of Pennsylvania, worth 20 electoral points
- Trump held an election day lead of almost 700,000 that got swallowed up as mail-in ballots were counted
- There are more than 89,000 ballots left to be counted, which are expected to extend Biden’s lead further
- If Biden wins Pennsylvania, then he will be the next president even if he loses every other state still in play
Joe Biden has delayed his primetime address to the nation as he inches towards victory with his lead in Pennsylvania, where he is now ahead by more than 27,000 votes.
The former vice president was expected to deliver a speech to the country on Friday evening, regardless of whether the election has been called in his favor.
Biden is yet to make any remarks as of 10pm, but he will still speak at some point tonight even if the race remains undecided, campaign officials have confirmed.
Biden is just 17 electoral votes shy of winning the presidency, meaning he only needs to secure Pennsylvania to bring him past the 270 threshold.
He currently has a 0.4% lead with 49.6% of the total vote, compared to Trump’s 49.2%. The Associated Press waits for a candidate to have a 0.5% lead to call a race. Anything below that difference would require a recount, as per state law.
Pennsylvania still has hundreds of thousands of votes left to count despite the secretary of state saying results could be returned on Thursday as Joe Biden (left, with running mate Sen Kamala Harris) closes the gap and President Donald Trump (right) loses legal bid to stop ballot counting in Philadelphia
Trump, who held a 675,000-vote lead early Wednesday, prematurely declared victory in the state, which holds 20 electoral college votes. By Thursday evening Trump’s lead had slipped to about 26,319 votes, as mail in ballots (pictured in Philadelphia) from across the state continued to be counted. The late counted ballots were overwhelming in Biden’s favor
Earlier on Friday night, Justice Samuel Alito announced all Pennsylvania counties must segregate ballots that arrived after Election Day, following an appeal lodged by Republicans earlier to exclude those votes from the total count.
Trump’s campaign had filed a motion to intervene in a decision by the state’s highest court that allowed election officials to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday’s Election Day that are delivered through Friday.
Alito’s order, however, comes after Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar had already instructed election officials to separate the ballots – limiting Trump’s ability to claim the court order as a victory.
And whether or not those ballots are ultimately counted seems unlikely to affect who gets the state’s 20 electoral votes now that Biden is leading by more than 27,130 votes.
The former vice president is on the cusp of winning the presidency with a 0.4% lead over Trump in the state.
As of late Friday, there were approximately 89,000 mail ballots still to be counted in Pennsylvania, with the majority in Allegheny County, the second largest county in the state.
Additionally, there are potentially tens of thousands of provisional ballots that remain to be tabulated, though an exact number remained unclear. Those ballots will be counted after officials verify their eligibility to be included.
Allegheny, which includes Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, could be what brings Biden to 270 electoral votes.
He currently has 253, compared to Trump’s 213, meaning he can win the presidency in one of two ways.
If he wins Pennsylvania, he gains 20 votes and no longer needs either Arizona or Nevada. But if he wins Arizona – which has 11 electoral college votes – and Nevada – which has 6 – he no longer needs Pennsylvania.
Biden’s plans to address the nation prompted an angry tweet from Donald Trump sent from the White House where he had spent the day reportedly fuming as he watched television and spoke to confidantes.
His legal path to challenging the election unclear and his mathematical path to retaining power apparently almost closed, Trump railed: ‘Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President. I could make that claim also. Legal proceedings are just now beginning!’
Then he tweeted – apparently somewhat plaintively – that his initial ‘big leads’ had vanished, something which election watchers had predicted for weeks before the election.
‘I had such a big lead in all of these states late into election night, only to see the leads miraculously disappear as the days went by. Perhaps these leads will return as our legal proceedings move forward!’ he tweeted.
But vote tallies in Pennsylvania and Nevada showed Biden’s lead – not Trump’s increasing.
In the White House, Trump’s inner circle were scrambling to work out how to tell him he had lost, while he vowed defiantly to pursue legal challenges to the count in a series of states, claiming he was fighting for ‘election integrity,’ the day after an extraordinary 17-minute tirade claiming he was the victim of a ‘conspiracy’ and that counting the votes was part of the ‘fraud.’
Biden’s campaign has kept ready an outdoor stage at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware for a primetime address and warned TV networks to be prepared for a speech.
Close supporters of the VP were tipped off Friday to head to the Chase Center in their vehicles. The Democrats have been holding major events drive-in movie theater style in order to ensure proper social distancing of their crowds. The Chase Center parking lot is where his campaign staged fireworks after he accepted the Democratic nomination during the Democratic National Convention, where the major speeches were moved to Wilmington due to the coronavirus pandemic. If the race is called for the former vice president, the event is expected to look the same.
The country and the world are waiting for election results from three states; Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona.
One reason for the tightening race is that under Pennsylvania law, elections officials are not allowed to process mail-in ballots until Election Day.
It’s a form of voting that has skewed heavily in Biden’s favor after Trump spent months claiming — without proof — that voting by mail would lead to widespread voter fraud.
There’s a possibility the race won’t be decided for days and according to CNN, there are about 102,000 ballots left to count. If there is less than a half percentage point difference between Biden and Trump’s vote total, state law dictates that a recount must be held.
Meanwhile, Trump had sued Pennsylvania to undermine whatever election result is returned. Voting was temporarily halted in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on Thursday as a result of the legal row. A judge intervened and dismissed the federal motion. People attend a ‘Count Every Vote’ demonstration in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Thursday
The scene in front of the White House early on day three after election day for the 2020 Presidential election
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney earlier on Friday said it was time for Trump to ‘put his big boy pants on’ and concede.
Democrats had long considered Pennsylvania a part of their ‘blue wall’ — a trifecta that also includes Wisconsin and Michigan — that for years had served as a bulwark in presidential elections. In 2016, Trump won each by less than a percentage point.
Biden, who was born in Scranton, claims favorite-son status in the state and has long played up the idea that he was Pennsylvania’s ‘third senator’ during his decades representing neighboring Delaware. He’s also campaigned extensively in the state from his home in Delaware.
Trump cannot win on Pennsylvania alone; with 214 electoral college votes, he’d still need to pick up either Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona or Nevada – the four other states where a result is yet to be officially confirmed.
Earlier on Thursday, Kathy Boockvar told CNN’s Jake Tapper: ‘I think there’s about 550,000 some odd — you know, plus or minus — ballots that are still in the process of being counted today.
‘Some of those may have already been counted but are not yet uploaded. But yeah, they’re coming in. We’re getting 10,000 here, 20,000 here, counties are furiously at work.
Pennsylvania said it would continue counting mail-in ballots until Friday so long as they were post-marked from November 3.
Meanwhile, Trump had sued Pennsylvania to undermine whatever election result is returned.
Voting was temporarily halted in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on Thursday as a result of the legal row.
A judge intervened and dismissed the federal motion.
In Nevada, there are only around 51,000 votes left to call before Friday and they say they need that much time.
Arizona also says they need until Friday to deliver a result on their remaining 450,000 votes.
The Trump campaign had a brief legal victory in Pennsylvania on Thursday when a judge ruled ballot observers can watch officials count ballots within six feet.
Representatives of both campaigns were in the room to watch the counts but at a further distance because of the coronavirus. A county judge agreed with the Trump campaign, but the state Supreme Court rejected it.
The situation in Pittsburgh is complicated by about 30,000 outstanding ballots, where a vendor sent the wrong ballots to voters and had to reissue new ballots with the correct races.
Poll workers now have to examine these ballots to make sure that people don’t vote twice, or, if they sent in the wrong ballot, they didn’t vote in races they aren’t eligible for.
They cannot legally be counted until Friday when Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh sits, swears in a special board to examine these ballots, as required by law
Trump’s team of lawyers have filed lawsuits on multiple fronts – to try to stem the flow of presumably pro-Biden mail ballots into the system, and to try to force greater access for observers so they presumably can challenge more individual ballots.
They scored an initial win Thursday morning, which former Florida Secretary of State Pam Bondi, a Trump backer, brandished at a press conference.
The ruling, by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, reverses a decision by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia. It lets Trumps observers ‘be permitted to observe all aspects of the canvassing process, within 6 feet, while adhering to all COVID-19 protocols, including wearing masks and maintaining social distancing’.
On Twitter, Trump touted it as a: ‘Big legal win in Pennsylvania!’
But then the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania almost instantly struck it down when Democrats appealed.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks to the media about a court order giving Trump’s campaign access to observe vote counting operations on Thursday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Trump supporters protest in front of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth capitol building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Thursday
The reason of the appeal was not concern over the watching itself, experts said, but because Democrats say Republicans accepted the rules on watching before they went into effect.
Conceding that the rules could be changed after they had been agreed would open the way to more rules being changed, they argue.
That is not the end of the road for the Trump campaign. The big battle, with a greater potential to affect the count, could come in an effort to challenge an earlier Supreme Court decision allowing the state to count mail-in ballots that come in three days after Election Day.
Conservative justices had indicated that it could get another hearing should these ballots that get counted later prove decisive.
But a decisive win by Biden with votes that came in before Election Day would undercut the need for the suit – and Biden was chipping away at Trump’s lead with hundreds of thousands of ballots outstanding.
Pennsylvania Democrats, mindful of potential challenges and alarmed by reports the Republican-controlled legislature might seek to intervene, have been segregating mail-ballots that come in later to prevent the state’s entire result from being thrown out.
Pennsylvania’s Attorney General blasted the move on Thursday.
‘That question is a question of state law,’ he said, noting it was decided by the state supreme court. ‘It was decided that those ballots and they will be counted,’ he told CNN.
‘We’re following the law here in Pennsylvania here. We’re counting these legal votes,’ he said.
