Joe Biden leads in the popular vote and is inching closer to becoming president-elect. Photo / AFP
Joe Biden leads in the popular vote and is inching closer to becoming president-elect. Photo / AFP
Democratic challenger Joe Biden is within a fingertip's reach of the White House, but President Donald Trump's campaign has filed lawsuits in a bid to contest the outcome of three undecided states.
Biden captured the key states of Michigan and Wisconsin yesterday which narrowed Trump's chances of holding on. Biden's Michigan victory inched him up to 264 Electoral College votes — just six shy of the 270 needed to win the White House.
It means the presidential challenger is just one battleground state away from crossing the threshold to become President-elect.
Speaking in Delaware, Biden says it was "clear" he would reach his goal.
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.
Trump held 214 electoral votes last night, and had deployed Republican lawyers and campaign officials to begin a legal assault against Democratic votes in key states.
"President Trump's campaign has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process, as guaranteed by Michigan law," said Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager.
Trump's team announced they would seek a recount in Wisconsin, which AP declared was won by Biden with more than 20,000 votes, or 0.6 percentage points.
Both sides headed to the courts in Pennsylvania to invalidate provisional and corrected ballots by citizens who were informed before polls closed that problems with their mail-in votes had caused them to be rejected by election officials.
Trump wants to fight the election in the courts. Photo / AP
In Georgia, where the President held a slim lead, the Trump campaign challenged the validity of 53 mail-in ballots in a lawsuit that was filed yesterday in a county court. The race in the southern state was tightening in Biden's favour last night.
Biden said the Democrats were on track to claim the presidency, but stopped short of declaring victory as counting continued in the election.
"When the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners," Biden said, as he and deputy Kamala Harris were on track to win more votes than any other ticket in history.
"I will govern as an American president," Biden said.
"There will be no red states and blue states when we win. Just the United States of America."
Tensions were clear at places where vote counting continued. Dozens of angry Trump supporters went to tally centres in Detroit and Phoenix as the returns went against him in the two key states, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete tally of the ballots took to the streets in cities across the US.
"Stop the count!" the Trump supporters chanted in Detroit. "Stop the steal!" they said in Phoenix.
The protests came after the President insisted without evidence that there were major problems with the voting and the ballot counting, especially with mail-in votes.
Wearing Trump gear, the Phoenix protesters 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.
Arizona Republican congressman Paul Gosar joined the crowd, declaring: "We're not going to let this election be stolen. Period."
People wanting to be election challengers yell as they look through the windows of the central counting board in Detroit. Photo / AP
Republican lawsuits in two states demanded better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, Trump's campaign said.
Deputy campaign manager Justin Clark said it sought to intervene in a Pennsylvania case at the Supreme Court dealing with whether ballots received up to three days after the election can be counted.
There have been no reports of fraud or any type of ballot concerns out of Pennsylvania, however.
Trump's campaign also called for a temporary halt in the counting in Pennsylvania and Michigan until it was given "meaningful" access in numerous locations and allowed to review ballots that already have been opened and processed.
In response, Biden repeated his assertion that "Every vote must be counted. No one's going to take our democracy away from us — not now, not ever," he said.
An unprecedented numbers of voters posted their ballots rather than queue at crowded polling stations during an uncontrolled Covid-19 outbreak — which has killed more than 233,000 Americans.
The mailed-in ballots — which take longer to process and in many states were not counted until election day — were expected to favour Biden, with more than half of his supporters voting by mail.
Some put aside fears of catching the virus — and waiting hours in line — to vote in person, joining some 102 million fellow Americans who voted days or weeks earlier, a record number that represented 73 per cent of the total vote in the 2016 presidential election.
With 3.1 million mail-in ballots to count in the key state of Pennsylvania, an order allowed them to be counted up until today local time if they were postmarked by November 3.
Biden said the Democrats were on track to claim the presidency, but stopped short of declaring victory as counting continued. Photo / AP
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told CNN the counting process was transparent.
"There are observers observing this counting, and the counting will continue," he said. Biden's campaign has sought donations for what it calls the "Biden Fight Fund".
"Our legal team is standing by, and they will prevail," campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon wrote in a fundraising email sent to supporters.
Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event he loses this year's election.
In September, the President was asked whether he would commit to "a peaceful transferral of power" after the election if he lost the vote.
"Well, we're going to have to see what happens," Trump responded.
"You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the (mail) ballots. And the ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and we'll have a very peaceful — there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.
In the event Trump would refuse to concede power following an election loss, he would be removed from the White House at midday on January 20, 2021, as he officially loses his authority, US academic Robert Shapiro told LiveScience.
Somebody swears [Biden] in as president. It could be the chief justice of the Supreme Court. It could be his grandmother. As of noon on the 20th [of January], he's the president of the United States. The entire Secret Service reports to him," Shapiro said.
"Donald Trump as the outgoing president has a contingent of Secret Service. Biden goes to the White House and the Secret Service escorts Trump out. That's what happens. All the civil service of the Government, every employee of the United States reports to Joe Biden at that juncture."
But as historian Jonathan Gienapp noted last month, this relies on all the institutions of Government (including the Secret Service) committing to abiding by the outcome of the election, no matter how it is decided.
In other words, if some branches of government don't obey the will of the people, the people would need to rise up and demand they do.
