• Trump hurls allegations of electoral fraud
• Biden says he’s ready for a long fight
• Latest results show Biden has 253 electoral votes against 213 for the Republican as 270 needed for win
• President demands recount in Wisconsin
• Protests held against president

WASHINGTON: At least 160 million Americans voted in the 2020 presidential election on Tuesday but failed to get the desired result by Wednesday afternoon — a clear winner to rule the country for the next four years.

In the afternoon, President Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term at the White House, made it obvious that he would not accept the election results if he lost. Instead, he asked the Supreme Court — which is already dominated by Republican judges — to decide.

“They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our country,” he complained in a tweet, as his rival Joe Biden’s vote tally increased when the election staff started counting early and mail-in votes.

Later, Biden announced that he too was ready for a long fight. “To make sure every vote is counted, we’re setting up the largest election protection effort ever assembled,” he said in a tweet.

He said he was setting up this fund “because Donald Trump doesn’t get to decide the outcome of this election — the American people do”.

“Chip in to power the new Biden Fight Fund. We will not rest until everyone’s vote is counted,” he said.

While retweeting a post, the Republican said that “…this is reason enough to go to court. No honest person can look at this and say it’s normal and un-concerning”.

Twitter hid this and some other Trump tweets, saying that this was an effort to unduly influence the election results. But this did not discourage Trump, who asked in another tweet: “How come every time they count mail-in ballot dumps, they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?”

The dispute surfaced early on Wednesday morning when Trump felt that counting early votes could deprive him of a victory, which otherwise had come so close but now seemed fleeting.

This see-saw began early on Tuesday night, when Democratic challenger Biden appeared moving towards the targeted 270 of the 538 electoral votes a candidate needs to win. But it changed by midnight when President Trump seemed poised to keep the White House for the next four years as he captured most Republican and some key swing states.

By then, large crowds of Democratic supporters had gathered outside the White House to celebrate Biden’s victory, as most opinion surveys had predicted. Like 2016, the polls proved wrong again, as a huge voter-turnout made this an unprecedentedly close contest.

Firecrackers and music stopped as the crowd checked results on their cellphones that showed Trump forging ahead. And at 12:45am President Trump announced that he “will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!”

At 2:30am on Wednesday, Trump appeared in the East Room of the White House and denounced the counting. “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country,” he said.

“We’ll be going to the US Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop,” he said more than an hour after the final polls closed in Alaska and it was still too early to claim victory. “What Trump said in his brief remarks was a reminder of why he does not deserve the office,” wrote the prestigious New Yorker magazine.

Standing before a phalanx of flags, Trump announced that the vote count had been “called off” because he had already beaten Biden. He said that he had also won the states that were still counting votes, including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. So, the counting should stop there but not in Arizona, where he trailed Biden.

This was a huge damper on an otherwise unprecedented election. The projected vote total — about 160m — marked a record high number of ballots cast in a presidential election and the highest voter turnout rate among eligible citizens since 1900. More than 100m ballots cast during the early voting period contributed to this record turnout.

Trump’s decision to dispute the results, however, would not only involve the Supreme Court. It can also bring in Congress, which could be asked to determine who will be the new US president from January 2021.

Normally, state laws guide the deadlines for counting and certifying election results. Most states usually release fully certified results within a few weeks of Election Day.

But the dispute could delay the election results this year as each and every mail-in vote will be counted and recounted to satisfy both Republicans and Democrats.

In such recounts, the final result can be different from the initial count.

By late Wednesday afternoon, Biden had won 248 of the required 270 electoral votes while Trump had gathered 214 votes.

Agencies add: Tension spiralled in the still undecided US election after President Trump made unprecedented claims of fraud and demanded a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden notched up another win to inch closer to overall victory.

Trump’s campaign announced a lawsuit to try and suspend the vote count in Michigan, where it said its team was denied proper access to observe vote counting. The campaign said it was also suing to halt the counting of votes in Pennsylvania.

The tight White House race and recriminations evoked memories of the 2000 election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.

That race, which hinged on a handful of votes in Florida, eventually ended up in the Supreme Court, which halted a recount while Bush was ahead.

Besides, scattered protests took place from Washington, DC to Washington state in the hours after polls closed, but there were no signs of widespread unrest or violence linked to the election. Overnight demonstrations in cities including Seattle, Washington and New York remained largely peaceful.

In Washington, more than 1,000 people protesting President Trump converged on Black Lives Matter Plaza on Tuesday night, just a block from the White House, while hundreds more marched through downtown, sometimes blocking traffic and setting off fireworks.

Protestors shouted “Whose streets? Our streets! and If we don’t get no justice, they don’t get no peace!”

Groups of teenagers danced in the street as onlookers cheered. Large banners, including one reading Trump lies all the time, were unfurled.

At one point, the marchers stabbed the tyres of a parked police van to flatten them.

Hundreds of people marched in anti-Trump demonstrations in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, with several arrested.

“This is what democracy looks like,” protesters chanted in Portland, where organisers said the demonstration would be peaceful and that regardless of the presidential election result, they would continue protesting in support of racial justice.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2020