It’s the morning of Nov. 4, the sun is up, and we still don’t know who will be the next president of the United States. While late last night the Associated Press called the state of Arizona for Biden, which in 2016 went for Trump, the counting of millions of ballots continues in battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidential election.
Colorado, as predicted, went for Biden. Nine states have not been called as of 7:00 a.m. Nov. 4. At the moment, Democratic candidate Joe Biden leads 224 electoral votes to President Donald Trump’s 213 electoral votes.
That did not stop current President Donald Trump from falsely declaring premature victory last night, saying “Frankly, we did win this election.” Then he added that he wanted “all voting go to stop immediately” (we think he meant counting, but that’s not what he said). He went on to declare that lawyers were already on their way to contest the election and it would need to be decided in the Supreme Court.
Biden made a brief statement that his campaign is on the road to victory, and encouraged people to be patient so that every vote is counted.
Trump, for his part, appears to be trying to set the narrative, with absolutely no validity, claiming fraudulent voting and ballot counting. Less obvious, after Trump’s blatant falsehoods, Vice President Mike Pence quietly said that the counting of all the ballots needed to continue.
If democracy were easy, more people would do it well,” said Jon Meacham speaking on MSNBC early this morning. “We have one choice before us: we have to count the votes. These are votes that have been cast legally, despite what the president says. The question is; will the president’s supporters accept the will of the people, when he is encouraging them not to?”
We are a nation of 330 million people, who do not exist for the entertainment of Donald Trump. “We aren’t an audience praising one person and this is, in fact, our government, added Meachem. “The question Trump’s supporters have to answer is, the personality of one person more important than all the rest of u? this is the existential question.”
The bottom line at this point: all voters need to continue to exhibit the patience we said was going to be required, as vote counting continues in these key battleground states. Every state has its own rules for counting every ballot, they are counted county by county, just as the count was done here in Chaffee County. Until that is done, the result won’t be known.
Patience, we remind all of us, is a virtue.
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