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Home / World

AP Explains: Election's validity intact despite Trump claims

By Nomaan Merchant
Other·
10 Nov, 2020 07:55 PM6 mins to read

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Joe Biden says Trump's failure to concede is an 'embarrassment' and is confident all Republicans will soon acknowledge him as President-elect. Video / Joe Biden via Facebook

US President-elect Joe Biden says while Donald Trump's failure to acknowledge his victory is 'an embarrassment' it does not change the dynamic of transition planning.

The United States presidential election was not tainted by widespread voter fraud or irregularities in how ballots were counted, despite a huge effort by Trump to prove otherwise.

In refusing to concede the election, Trump claims that he would have won were it not for "illegal" votes counted in several states that he lost or where he is currently trailing.

But Trump and his allies haven't offered any proof and their legal challenges have largely been rejected by the courts.

Nonpartisan investigations of previous elections have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

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State officials from both parties, as well as international observers, have also stated that the 2020 election went well.

A look at the election and the allegations Trump has made.

HOW MANY PEOPLE VOTED THIS YEAR?

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More than 150 million people voted in the presidential election. As of today, one week after the election, Biden had received almost five million more votes than Trump.

Biden is currently projected to have 290 votes in the Electoral College to Trump's 214, according to an AP analysis of vote counts in all 50 states. AP has not yet determined the winner in Alaska, Georgia or North Carolina.

Of the states Trump has most targeted as allegedly tainted by fraud, Biden holds small but significant leads in all of them. The Democrat leads in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

We're well out of automatic recount territory now (0.7 > 0.5), and Biden is still on track to win PA by more than double Trump's 2016 PA margin (44,292 votes).

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 10, 2020

HOW DID THE ELECTION GO?

Several states successfully enacted voting measures during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Democratic stronghold of California improved its mail-in balloting system, for example, and delivered as expected for Biden. But Trump easily won reliably Republican Nebraska, North Dakota and Montana, all states that also significantly expanded vote-by-mail this year.

Two decades after it was at the centre of a disputed recount, Florida adopted early voting and allowed voters to cast absentee ballots without having an excuse. AP called Florida for Trump last Thursday.

Vote counting was slow in three Midwestern states that went for Trump four years ago and flipped to Biden this time: the so-called "blue wall" of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

President-elect Joe Biden: "The whole Republican Party has been put in a position, with a few notable exceptions, of being mildly intimidated by the sitting president." https://t.co/D7t03ZfZfd pic.twitter.com/YyPL7Z5xjd

— ABC News (@ABC) November 10, 2020

That's because of an increase in mail-in ballots, which the Biden campaign pushed its supporters to use as a safety measure due to the pandemic. Trump baselessly argued that mail-in ballots were subject to fraud and encouraged his supporters to show up to vote in person on election day.

As a result, Trump led all three states in election day voting, but those leads were erased as mail-in votes were counted.

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All three states largely ignored advice from nonpartisan observers to expand the window for counting mail-in ballots before election day. Michigan gave election officials one day, and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin did not allow counting beforehand. All three states have Republican legislatures.

Trump is losing to Biden by...

20,539 votes in Wisconsin
47,215 votes in Pennsylvania
12,567 votes in Georgia
14,746 votes in Arizona
36,274 votes in Nevada

These are not margins that get undone in recounts.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 10, 2020

WHAT IS TRUMP CHALLENGING?

The Trump campaign has filed more than a dozen lawsuits in at least five states.

In Pennsylvania, the campaign has challenged the state Supreme Court ruling allowing election officials to accept mail-in ballots up to three days after the election as long as they were postmarked on election day.

Trump has also sued over campaign observers allegedly being blocked from witnessing vote tallying in Pennsylvania. And he's challenged the secretary of state instructing counties that voters whose absentee ballots were rejected could cast a provisional ballot.

The US president-elect may be invited to a meeting with EU heads of state perhaps even before his inauguration.

This willingness to put aside formalities reflects how happy many leaders are about Joe Biden’s victory. https://t.co/QmKIc4EAyG

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) November 10, 2020

Trump has won one victory so far: A state court ruled his campaign observers had to be allowed closer to the actual vote counting. That ruling had no impact on the outcome of the race.

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Four other lawsuits filed by the campaign have been dismissed. Others are pending.

Yesterday, his campaign sued to force Pennsylvania not to certify the results of the election altogether. The 85-page lawsuit itself contained no evidence of voter fraud, other than a smattering of allegations such as an election worker in Chester County altering "over-voted" ballots by changing votes that had been marked for Trump to another candidate.

Top Democratic leaders in the state accused Trump of trying to disenfranchise voters and overturn an election he lost.

Asked what he's been saying to world leaders on congratulatory phone calls, President-elect Joe Biden replies, "I'm letting them know that America's back." https://t.co/IRcHtvG7R4 pic.twitter.com/rrGAUI4Y9o

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 10, 2020

WHAT ARE TRUMP'S ALLIES SAYING?

Trump's lawyers and campaign staff say the election is not over and that they are investigating claims in several states, though they continue to lack any evidence of widespread fraud that affected the outcome of the race. Top Republicans have supported the president's efforts to fight the election results in court.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump was "100 per cent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options." Attorney-General William Barr authorised the Justice Department to investigate "clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities."

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WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

All disputes over the counts in each state must be completed by December 8. Members of the Electoral College vote on December 14.

The US House and Senate hold a joint session on January 6, 2021, to count the electoral votes in each state.

- AP

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