Tag: 2020 election

Fight for Senate majority boils down to Georgia

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Control of the Senate is boiling down to Georgia, likely dragging the fight for the majority out until early January. 

Democrats are pinning their hopes on being able to force a 50-50 Senate on a narrow, uphill path that requires them to win both seats in the typically red state. If Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins the White House, a 50-50 margin would hand them the majority because Vice President Kamala Harriscould break a tie.

Democrats know they will have a chance to win one race in a runoff on Jan. 5, when GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler will face Democratic nominee Raphael Warnock. Continue reading.

Dear Trump, Enough Is Enough

The idea that Trump, the leader of the free world, would simply declare himself the winner of a U.S. election jarred even some of the most loyal of Republican stalwarts.

FOR NEARLY FOUR YEARS of the Trump presidency, the question to Republican lawmakers and leaders has been: Where would you draw the line when it comes to supporting President Donald Trump? The nasty tweets, the thousands of misstatements, the promotion of his business interests while in office? Maybe separating children from their parents when they came over the border illegally or threatening to withhold aid from states and governors he doesn’t like?

Turns out, the line came as Trump faced the reality that he might lose the election, as mail-in ballot counting started to take must-win states out of Trump’s reach. Even as millions of votes remained to be counted, Trump boasted of a victory early Wednesday. All week, Trump and his campaign have been insisting on social media that the president had won states like Pennsylvania and Georgia that had yet to be called.

That did it for a wide array of Republicans, and not just those who had already separated themselves from Trump. The idea that the leader of the free world would simply declare himself the winner – something Americans criticize in other countries and even punish other nations for doing – jarred the most loyal of Republican stalwarts. Continue reading.

Secretaries of State in Spotlight as Trump Ratchets Up Attacks to Sow Doubt

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While state election centers are broadcast on cable news and have drawn partisan supporters to the sites as thirst for electoral updates intensifies, election administrators have continued to diligently tabulate the votes.

PHILADELPHIA — They typically operate behind the scenes and far from the spotlight. But as the final count in the 2020 presidential election drags on and President Trump assaults the integrity of the results, otherwise obscure secretaries of state, election commissioners and clerks have found their every utterance meriting breaking news interruptions and all-caps cable chyrons.

With the occupant of the White House hinging on the results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, the Trump campaign has sought to ratchet up pressure on election officials, threatening legislation and trying to shape public opinion with carnival-like events. Mr. Trump himself baselessly claimed widespread fraud and that people were “trying to steal the election,” at a news conference Thursday evening. And the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., even tried to make support of the effort a litmus test of the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

“Everyone should be watching who is actually fighting this flagrant nonsense and who is sitting on the sidelines,” he wrote Thursday afternoon on Twitter. An hour later, he fumed, “The total lack of action from virtually all of the ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is pretty amazing.” Continue reading.

Trump challenges electoral process as hopes for victory fade

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President Trump on Thursday without providing any direct evidence of fraud, challenged the electoral process and claimed that the election was being stolen from him.

Trump made the remarks as part of a lengthy written statement that he mostly stuck with as Democratic nominee Joe Biden closed in on the 270 electoral votes needed to become president-elect and end Trump’s time in the Oval Office.

Trump, who has seen his path to 270 electoral votes greatly narrow, said he believed he would ultimately win the election and promised a lengthy legal fight to challenge the results.  Continue reading.

Some in GOP break with Trump over baseless vote-fraud claims

WASHINGTON — Some Republican lawmakers on Thursday criticized President Donald Trump’s unsupported claim that Democrats are trying to “steal” the election, saying Trump’s comments undermine the U.S. political process and the bedrock notion that all Americans should have their vote counted.

Trump, who has complained for weeks about mail-in ballots, escalated his allegations late Thursday, saying at the White House that the ballot-counting process is unfair and corrupt. Trump did not back up his claims with any details or evidence, and state and federal officials have not reported any instances of widespread voter fraud.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, tweeted that the president’s claims of fraud are “getting insane.” If Trump has “legit” concerns about fraud, they need to be based on evidence and taken to court, Kinzinger said, adding, “STOP Spreading debunked misinformation.” Continue reading.

USPS processed 150,000 ballots after Election Day, jeopardizing thousands of votes

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The number of mailed ballots not delivered by Nov. 3 is expected to grow as more postal data is released in the coming days.

This story was updated Friday, Nov. 5, and includes a correction.*

More than 150,000 ballots were caught in U.S. Postal Service processing facilities Wednesday and not delivered by Election Day, agency data shows, including more than 12,000 in five of the states that have yet to be called for either President Trump or Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

Another 39,000 ballots were processed Thursday, agency data shows, including more than 4,000, in the remaining swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Despite assurances from Postal Service leaders that agency officials were conducting daily sweeps for misplaced ballots, the mail service acknowledged in court filings that thousands of ballots had not been processed in time, and that more ballots were processed Wednesday than on Election Day. Continue reading.

Biden defeats Trump to win presidency

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Joe Biden has won election as the nation’s 46th president, defeating Donald Trump and ending his presidency by winning a series of tight contests across national battlegrounds. 

NBC, CNN, ABC and The Associated Press all called the race for Biden shortly before 11:30 a.m. Saturday after a grueling vote count that had the country on pins and needles. Fox News called the race for Biden a short while later after declaring him the winner in Pennsylvania and Nevada.

 The projections came seconds after Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania grew to more than 30,000 votes after Philadelphia reported about 3,000 ballots. Biden won 85 percent of that count, and more ballots from the city are expected later today. Continue reading.

Judge won’t halt challenge to Minnesota extended ballot deadline

Votes received after 8 p.m. Nov. 3 will be segregated.

A federal judge in St. Paul on Thursday denied a request to halt proceedings in a Republican challenge to the state’s extended deadline for accepting mail-in ballots in the presidential race.

Although Democrat Joe Biden carried the state decisively over President Donald Trump, a pre-election ruling by the Eighth U.S. Circuit of Appeals required that ballots arriving after Nov. 3 be set aside for potential legal challenges.

More than 10,000 ballots were received Wednesday and Thursday by election officials statewide, a fraction of Biden’s winning margin of more than 230,000 votes in the state. Continue reading.

Leslie Jones Hilariously Compares Donald Trump To Top 40 Radio

The “Saturday Night Live” alum chopped down the president’s bogus election fraud claims on “Late Night.

Comedian Leslie Jones said Wednesday that President Donald Trump is like a Top 40-playing radio station. (Watch the clip below.)

Jones watched Trump baselessly claim that the rightful counting of legal mail-in votes in battleground states was illegal. “This is a fraud on the American public,” the president said on election night.

Trump made similar allegations even before Election Day, laying the groundwork for repudiating vote tallies in case he lost to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. With the outcome still uncertain on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers filed a blizzard of lawsuits.

The “Saturday Night Live” alum called Trump’s antics “Entertainment 101.” Continue reading.

Biden’s Campaign Wants You All To Chill Out. Trump’s Campaign Wants You All To Freak Out.

There are still votes being counted in several swing states that will determine the race’s winner.

WILMINGTON, Delaware — We’re approaching 48 hours of ballot counting and doomscrolling and weird pop-up news conferences from Rudy Giuliani — but there is still no conclusion to the 2020 election.

Though both sides claim to be on track to win, their very different approaches to this period of uncertainty tell the larger story.

President Donald Trump and his allies, including former campaign officials and the irrepressible Giuliani, are trying to pipe more chaos into the process with tweets demanding that the counting stop and through lawsuits with questionable merit designed to cast doubt on the integrity of the process. Joe Biden and his team, meanwhile, have been a veritable fount of confidence and patience. His campaign manager opened a Thursday morning briefing by bragging that she was well rested and repeatedly returning to a message for nervous Democrats that amounted to Chill out, everyone. We got this. Continue reading.