US Election 2020: Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania drops dramatically

Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s Secretary of State, said Arizona’s won’t be final until tomorrow night

Joe Biden’s lead in Arizona has dropped to less than 47,000 votes after Donald Trump narrowed the gap following a dump of mail-in ballots on Thursday night.  

Biden remains ahead in the battleground state but only by 46,257 or 50.1 per cent, compared to Trump’s 48.5 per cent, after the president secured the majority vote in the most populous county, Maricopa. 

The latest figures means Biden now leads by 1.5 percentage points, down from 2.4 points Thursday morning. 

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said there are now 285,000 ballots that still need to be counted statewide, with 200,000 of those in Maricopa County. Officials are expected to update the count by 11am Friday.  

It comes after the AP and and Fox News had both called Arizona early on Wednesday morning, claiming there was no possible way for Trump to claw it back from him – a move which was later called into question.   

Arizona holds 11 crucial electoral college votes which, when giving them to Biden now, poises him for the White House with 264 of the 270 that he needs. He would only need to win Nevada, Georgia, or North Carolina to claim victory if his Arizona lead holds. 

Nevada holds 6 electoral college votes and will be announced at noon EST. Georgia holds 16 and will be announced later. Trump is ahead in Georgia by only 18,000 votes and there are still some 60,000 votes left to count. The count is expected to be completed there today.

If Biden loses Arizona to Trump, Trump goes from 214 electoral college votes to 225. He would then only need 42 additional electoral college votes from  Georgia (16), North Carolina (15) and Pennsylvania (20) – all states in which he is leading – to claim victory, assuming he wins Alaska’s three electoral college votes which he is all but guaranteed to. 

The delay prolongs an already excruciating wait to find out who will be the next President for frustrated Americans and people all over the world who are now asking why it is taking so long to reach a conclusion. 

There has been no simple answer so far. In some states it’s because the margin is incredibly tight. In others, it’s because mail-in ballots haven’t yet arrived and can be counted for days yet. Official counts are never normally returned on election day or even in the immediate aftermath. The election is always called instead by a TV or news network based on analysis of possible outcomes. 

But none are calling it this year, because the race in the remaining swing states has been so tight.   

As the excruciating wait dragged on on Thursday morning, Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s Secretary of State, said the process would simply take as long as it takes. 

‘There are just under 300,000 votes left to count in Maricopa County which is two thirds of the voting population.  Statewide, just under 450,000 votes left to count so we’re getting there, we have said from the beginning this take’s time. We’re going to focus on making sure every valid vote counts. 

‘I haven’t gotten an estimate from Maricopa County about how long it’s going to take them to get through the ballots. It’s not looking like today – probably closer to tomorrow that we’ll be looking at getting through those ballots,’ she told Good Morning America.

At 5pm EST, she said the same number still had to be counted and that Maricopa County were only getting through 140,000 a day – that means it could take another two days.  

Joe Biden is now leading in Nevada by more than 11,000 votes as of Thursday night as President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a federal lawsuit in the state, alleging that ineligible votes were cast in the Las Vegas area.

About 75 per cent of the Nevada votes are in and Biden is leading by 11,438 votes, which is only about 1 per cent, as of Thursday night, according to CNN.

But there are outstanding about 50,000 ballots left to be counted in the coming days. Under state law, they can still be accepted so long as they were postmarked by the November 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.

Nevada has delayed giving its election result, saying they need until at least tomorrow to count the remaining votes, as the country and the world wait in agony to find out who the next president will be. 

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign’s complaint filed in US District Court resurrected an effort abandoned just hours earlier in Nevada state court — a court order to stop the Clark County Registrar of Voters from using an optical scanning machine to process ballots and validate voter signatures.   

Joe Biden is now leading in Nevada by more than 11,000 votes as of Thursday night as President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a federal lawsuit in the state, alleging that ineligible votes were cast in the Las Vegas area. Trump supporters are seen demonstrating in Las Vegas on Thursday 

The federal filing cites experiences of a woman who said Thursday she was turned away from voting in person because a mailed ballot had been cast with her signature and a political strategist TV commentator who said he was denied an opportunity to observe ballot counting late on election night. 

Trump Nevada campaign co-chairman Adam Laxalt said the new filing ‘highlights ongoing voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement in Clark County’.

State Attorney General Aaron Ford called it ‘a Hail Mary’ and ‘another opportunity to undermine the confidence in this election’ while ballots are still being counted.

Ford noted a federal judge dismissed in September an effort to block the state law that let mailed ballots go out to each of Nevada’s more than 1.7 million active registered voters.

‘When they can’t stop you from voting, they try to stop your vote from counting,’ he said.

If Biden claims Nevada today, he will win another 6 electoral college points, giving him 270 when factoring in the 11 that come from Arizona.

Arizona was called for him on Wednesday morning by Fox and the AP but with 450,000 votes still outstanding, it remains in play for Trump. If Biden loses Arizona, he has 259 electoral college votes. He’d need another 11 from either Georgia – which holds 16 – North Carolina – which holds 15 – or Pennsylvania – which holds 20 – to win.

It’s unclear when North Carolina will announce, but it is expected to go to Trump as it did in 2016. The race in Nevada has been tight. For most of the morning, Biden led by only around 7,000 votes there.  

Trump’s team is crying fraud. They say they have ‘evidence’ that ‘tens of thousands of votes’ had been cast there fraudulently. 

‘We are confident that when all legal votes are tallied — and only legal votes are tallied — President Trump will win the state of Nevada,’ Former Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell told Fox News on Thursday morning. 

‘The reality is transparency is not political. Ballots are not automatically legal votes until they’re checked. We are not being able to check.

‘There’s a 30 day residency requirement in the state of Nevada. If you haven’t been in the state for 30 days it is illegal to vote. We are filing this federal lawsuit to protect legal voters. 

‘It is unacceptable in this country to have illegal votes counted. That is what’s happening in the state of Nevada,’ Grenell claimed at a press conference. 

Nevada law states that to be eligible to vote, a person has to have been a resident of the state for at least 30 days before the election. 

That does not necessarily mean that they have to have been physically in the state for the 30 days preceding the election.  

Trump’s people also claim that many of the votes in Nevada came from people who no longer live there, or were cast under the names of deceased people. 

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are just about neck and neck in Georgia after the president’s lead dipped below 2,000 votes in the latest ballot count on Thursday night.  

Trump remains ahead but only by a slim margin of 1,775, putting both candidates in equal standing in terms of percentage points with each holding 49.4 per cent of the vote. 

There are now approximately 14,000 ballots that still need to be processed in the state in addition to the 8,900 overseas and military ballots that are due to arrive by 5pm on Friday. 

Of the outstanding votes, about 5,000 will come from Clayton County, a largely democratic county, which are expected to be counted by midnight, the county’s board of elections directors, Shauna Dozier told CNN.   

Trump’s standing in Georgia has swiftly weakened in the last 24 hours, having been up 9,000 votes on Thursday morning and 18,000 on Wednesday night.  

Biden could win the election with Georgia, which amounts to 16 electoral college points, if he holds on to his lead in Arizona. 

The result in Arizona is not expected until Friday because there are still 285,000 votes left to count. About 200,000 of those will come from Maricopa County, where officials are expected to update the count by 11am.

Officials in both Arizona and Nevad – where only 51,000 need to be counted – say they need at least another day to get through them and get through them accurately, despite the fact that they’ve rattled through many, many more votes in the last few days alone. 

Why it is taking so long to reach a conclusion is a question that millions of frustrated Americans are asking and it’s being heard around the world. There is no simple answer for it. 

In one Georgia county, there was a corrupt memory card on one scanner which meant 400 had to be recounted. Officials in some counties are also using paper ballots for the first time in 20 years because they voted earlier this year that machine voting was not secretive enough. They are then scanning all of the paper votes which is an ‘arduous’ process, it was said on Thursday. 

In some states, it’s because the race is simply tighter than it was in the last election so is difficult for news and TV networks – who ordinarily call elections – to make a decisive projection. Another reason is that there are more mail-in ballots this year than in elections gone by because of COVID-19. They are taking longer to pour in and different states had different rules on when those could start being counted. 

In any event, Trump is already contesting the results in several states. He says there has been voter fraud in Nevada, with people sending in ballots under dead residents’ names, and from non-residents. 

In Georgia, he says they weren’t able to verify that the count was being done properly.  

In Wisconsin, he is also demanding a recount, and in Michigan and Pennsylvania, he wants the counting to be halted.  

Trump appeared in public for the first time in more than 36 hours on Thursday, speaking in the White House briefing room, where he made unfounded accusations that the presidential election was being stolen from him.

In almost every state that Biden has won, Trump’s lead has been strong at first then shrank as more ballots- specifically mail-in ballots – have been tallied up. 

He thinks it is suspicious. 

Speaking on Thursday, Georgia’s Voting System Implementation Manager, Gabriel Sterling, said there was nothing suspicious or strange about the process, but that elections were never normally so close so it doesn’t always have to come down to an official count. 

‘We can’t know how long the process will take. We hope to have clarity but “done” is a very relative term at this point.

‘As we’ve been stating for weeks and months, it’s going to take time.  The effort here is to make sure everybody’s legal vote is counted properly.

‘The issue we have in Georgia is it’s a close vote. There’s other states that have more votes to count than we do but it’s a wide margin so nobody cares,’ Sterling said. 

He said he did anticipate giving a result by the end of the day. 

In Georgia, Superior Court judge James Bass said there was ‘no evidence’ to the Trump suit’s claims that a 53 ballots arrived late and got mixed with other ballots. In Michigan, Judge Cynthia Stephens ruled against the Trump campaign’s push to stop the count in order to gain additional access for its observers. ‘I have no basis to find that there is a substantial likelihood of success on the merits,’ she said.

‘All of the recent Biden claimed States will be legally challenged by us for Voter Fraud and State Election Fraud,’ Trump tweeted Thursday amid the nationwide blitz of court challenges. ‘Plenty of proof – just check out the Media. WE WILL WIN! America First!’

Trump’s team scored a win in a Pennsylvania court, but not on an issue that appears likely to sway a race with thousands of ballots being processed.

‘The Trump campaign called it a ‘major victory,’ but state officials appealed, saying it ‘jeopardizes both the safety of the City Defendants’ canvass, plus the privacy of voters.’

Even if the Trump legal efforts don’t ultimately prevail, they are already succeeding in slowing down the voting process, and Trump’s allies are using them to claim Trump has seized an ‘overwhelming victory’ among ‘verifiable’ ballots.