While there are surely those on both sides of the political divide that wish the election were decided, three days after the election the race in key battleground states is still too close to call. If anything, this election is a mirror image of our country at this point in our history; divided and anxious.
Overnight Democratic candidate Joe Biden pulled ahead of President Donald Trump in Georgia, but just barely. The slim 1,000 vote margin hangs by a thread, with around 3,000 military votes (out of a possible 8,000) projected to come in by the 5:00 p.m. EST deadline.
In Pennsylvania, Biden continued to chip away at Trump’s lead, with the 100,000 or so votes still to be counted that came in prior to election day from counties that traditionally vote more Democrat.
In other cliff-hanger states like Nevada and Arizona, vote counting continues, with almost all the major networks holding back, reporting the counts, but refusing to project a winner.
Both camps refrain from projecting victory or defeat.
The Biden campaign says they are “feeling good,” about the count and that they remain cautiously optimistic. They continue to stress that every vote has to be counted and the results lie with those votes.
“The election is not over,’ said the Trump campaign’s General Counsel Matt Morgan.
He expressed confidence in Arizona and said they are asking for a recount in Wisconsin. He pointed out that in their view their vote count observers hadn’t been allowed access in Pennsylvania, then claimed that in Nevada people were voting who didn’t live in the state. He offered no proof for any of those claims.
As of 9:00 a.m. Friday morning, the count stands at 253 electoral votes for Biden, and 214 for Trump. Biden holds a roughly four million vote edge in the popular vote too. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidential election. Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would put Biden in the win column, or the combination of Arizona and Nevada.
At the moment, the Trump strategy appears to be to just keep this alive, which is why the Fox News early call of Arizona for Biden has been attacked. They want it to appear to still be competitive, and challenge the elector designations.
In fact, the Trump campaign’s legal challenges do not appear to be based on fact; they have offered no substantive proof of voter fraud or vote-counting irregularities. Their complaints about the vote-counting in Pennsylvania that is continuing after the Nov. 3 election day was brought about by the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature and the president himself. The legislature refused to change their election process to allow mail-in ballots to be processed to be ready to count on election day and the president discouraged mail-in voting.
The country’s process of voting county-by-county has been developed over more than 200 years of the democratic process. The fact that it is decentralized is a benefit; it localizes voting to the government level most connected with the people, and it prevents agitators and outside influence from attacking it at a centralized point.
While the Trump campaign is described by those commenting from the White House as “deflated”, they also say they are looking at a days-long fight and there has been no talk of a concession speech. Instead, the president went on record claiming “widespread voter fraud.”
There is absolutely no evidence on which to base such a statement. There are factions that look to be forming within the Republican party. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Utah Senator Mitt Romney both have said the president is being inflammatory.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz and California Representative Kevin McCarthy have been quoted as saying Trump won this election and they are going to stop “this from happening’ [apparently declaration of Biden topping 270 electoral votes]. They don’t say how.
In the meantime, selfless poll workers are continuing to do their jobs in state after state, as protests rage outside, police protect them and the process — and the counting continues.
If anything, the heroes of this election are our poll workers and the process they are continuing to follow – the real protectors of our democracy.
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