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2020 election updates and results

Live coverage and results

From election night

Election officials in key battlegrounds pressed forward Thursday with presidential vote counting as Democrat Joe Biden urged patience and President Donald Trump pursued legal options with little success, insisting the processing of ballots should be stopped.

The president spent Thursday at the White House, working the phones and escalating efforts to sow doubt about the outcome of the race. In a series of tweets, he pushed baseless allegations of electoral misconduct and said the ongoing vote count of ballots submitted before and on Election Day should cease. Trump reiterated his claims Thursday night at the White House, his first public appearance since late on Election Night.

“This is a case when they are trying to steal an election, they are trying to rig an election,” he said of Democrats, whom he accused of corruption while providing no evidence.

Biden, meanwhile, sought to project the appearance of a president, speaking briefly to reporters after attending a COVID-19 briefing on Thursday. He offered reassurance that the counting could be trusted and declared that “each ballot must be counted.”

“I ask everyone to stay calm. The process is working,” said Biden. “It is the will of the voters. No one, not anyone else who chooses the president of the United States of America."

The different approaches unfolded as the nation waited to learn which man would collect the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency. Biden’s victories in Michigan and Wisconsin put him in a commanding position, but Trump showed no sign of giving up. It could take several more days for the vote count to conclude and a clear winner emerge.

With millions of ballots yet to be tabulated, Biden already had received more than 72 million votes, the most in history.

Trump's campaign engaged in a flurry of legal activity to try to improve the Republican president's chances, 

 and filing lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. Statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes; Biden led by more than 20,000 ballots out of nearly 3.3 million counted.

 Trump campaign lawsuits there on Thursday.

Biden has already won Michigan and Wisconsin. The contests in Georgia and Pennsylvania, along with Nevada and North Carolina, were tight with votes still being tabulated.

The Trump campaign said it was confident the president would ultimately pull out a victory in Arizona, where votes were also still being counted, including in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous area. The AP has declared Biden the winner in Arizona and said Thursday that it was monitoring the vote count as it proceeded.

“The Associated Press continues to watch and analyze vote count results from Arizona as they come in,” said Sally Buzbee, AP’s executive editor. “We will follow the facts in all cases.”

Officials confident vote will stand up to recount

States still in play and what makes them that way

What effect could lawsuits have on the election?

Trump's legal challenges faced long odds. He would have to win multiple suits in multiple states in order to stop vote counts, since more than one state was undeclared.

There were no obvious grounds for the Justice Department to attempt to intervene to stop a vote count at the state level, unless the federal government could somehow assert a violation of federal voting laws or the Constitution. The department could theoretically file a brief in support of a Trump campaign lawsuit if it believed there were federal concerns at stake, but that intervention would be extraordinary.

While Trump has insisted that ballot counting stop, it was unclear exactly what that included. Counting for votes received by Nov. 3 was continuing, but roughly 20 states allow ballots to be counted if postmarked by Nov. 3 but received in the days after. In some states that is as long as nine days, or even longer. Some of the deadline changes were made as a result of the pandemic, but others are just routine parts of state election laws. Trump has fixated on Pennsylvania, where the Supreme Court refused to stop a court’s ruling that allowed for a three-day extension.

Claim that Sharpie pens ruin Arizona ballots misses the mark

He also said he was taking fraud claims to court — but most of the lawsuits only demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted. A judge in Georgia dismissed the campaign’s suit there less than 12 hours after it was filed. And a Michigan judge dismissed a Trump lawsuit over whether enough GOP challengers had access to handling of absentee ballots

Biden attorney Bob Bauer said the suits were legally “meritless.” Their only purpose, he said "is to create an opportunity for them to message falsely about what’s taking place in the electoral process.”

It was unclear when a national winner would be determined after a long, bitter campaign dominated by 

. The U.S. on Wednesday set another record for daily confirmed cases as several states posted all-time highs. The pandemic has 

Beyond the presidency, Democrats had hoped the election would allow the party to reclaim the Senate and pad its majority in the House. But while the voting scrambled seats in the House and Senate, it ultimately 

Hundreds arrested after marching onto I-94 

The Associated Press

Author

Election officials in key battlegrounds are pressing forward with vote counting, two days after Election Day. Democrat Joe Biden is urging patience, while President Donald Trump is pursuing legal options, insisting the processing of ballots should be stopped.

Biden-Trump counting presses ahead 2 days after Election Day

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