Trump vs. Biden: Live Updates - The New York Times
Nov. 6, 2020, 2:00 a.m. ET
DetroitBryan Denton for The New York Times
PhiladelphiaVictor J. Blue for The New York Times
PhiladelphiaVictor J. Blue for The New York Times
PhoenixAdriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
As election officials in several battleground states continued to count votes on Thursday night, small groups of Biden and Trump supporters held demonstrations in several cities.
Nov. 6, 2020, 1:22 a.m. ET
By
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, in Columbia, South Carolina.Credit...Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Hours after President Trump’s son took to Twitter to complain that none of the Republicans with aspirations to run for president in 2024 were publicly siding with his father, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina defended Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Appearing on Fox News, Mr. Graham, who is one of the president’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill, did not offer any evidence to support the spurious claims of the White House. While he objected to the vote counting in Pennsylvania, he said he supported the process in Arizona.
“I trust Arizona, I don’t trust Philadelphia,” he said.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas followed his Republican colleague on the network and accused Democrats of trying to steal the election. He also offered no evidence to back his assertion.
The two senators were among several Republicans — including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, and Representative Doug Collins of Georgia — who on Thursday suggested without evidence that something was awry in the election.
“Everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet,” Mr. McCarthy said on Fox News. “Do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.”
Other Republicans have either rebuked the president for his false claims of voter fraud, or offered statements that stopped far short of endorsing his views.
Nov. 6, 2020, 12:30 a.m. ET
By
Alaska has some generous ballot return deadlines and won’t count absentee votes until next Tuesday.Credit...Michael Armstrong/Homer Tribune, via Associated Press
SEATTLE — There are a half-dozen states where the presidential outcome remains unclear. Five of them are swing states. And then there is Alaska.
While President Trump is favored in Alaska and holds about 63 percent of the votes tallied so far, so few votes have been counted that news media outlets have resisted calling the race. And there will not be much clarity until next week.
The glacial pace of tabulation is a result of an election plan that involves waiting to count absentee votes until Nov. 10. Alaska elections officials have said they planned to check each absentee vote against official precinct books from Election Day to ensure that someone did not vote twice.
The sprawling state also has some generous ballot return deadlines. While votes must be postmarked by Election Day, absentee ballots are allowed if they arrive within 10 days of the election — or 15 days if coming from out of the country.
The long delay has caused some angst and plenty of speculation. While Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, has 63 percent of the vote so far, his Democratic challenger, Al Gross, said he believed the remaining votes would trend so much in his favor that he could win.
Nick Corasaniti in Philadelphia
There are roughly 175,000 absentee ballots still to count in Pennsylvania, including more than 58,000 in Philadelphia. Major counties like Philadelphia will keep counting through the night.
Police officers kept watch as small groups of Trump supporters and Black Lives Matters protesters faced off in Detroit Thursday night.Credit...Bryan Denton for The New York Times
DETROIT — About 40 supporters of President Trump with megaphones and flags spent part of Thursday night in front of the TCF Center, where Detroit’s absentee ballots were being counted a day after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner of Michigan. On the opposite side of the street stood about an equal number of Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
The two groups yelled at each other while the police kept watch. “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go,” chanted the Black Lives Matter protesters. The Trump supporters would later amend the phrase: “Hey hey, ho ho, voter fraud has got to go.”
Though the night was largely peaceful, a scuffle ensued after a man from the conservative group walked into the opposing crowd. The police rushed in to break up the commotion, and someone sprayed mace into the eyes of the Trump supporter.
The man, who said he lived in Michigan but declined to identify himself, was dressed in a military-style uniform and said he was armed. “We’re here because they’re stealing the election right in front of us,” he said as he continued to wipe his eyes.
Steven Montgomery, a 38-year-old cook from Detroit who stood with the Black Lives Matter demonstrators, said he was excited to protest against the Trump supporters but wondered whether the demonstration had been beneficial in any way.
“They’re just babies,” he said, adding, “We really shouldn’t have even wasted our time.”
Nov. 5, 2020, 11:10 p.m. ET
By
Absentee ballots are often rejected when the voter forgets to sign or uses a signature that does not match the one on file with the state.Credit...Audra Melton for The New York Times
With Georgia’s 16 electoral votes likely to be decided by a tiny margin, Democrats are urging voters there to fix absentee ballots that were rejected because of invalid or missing signatures before the deadline on Friday evening.
Those who voted absentee — a group that this year has been heavily Democratic — can check online to see whether election officials have accepted or rejected their ballots. Absentee ballots are often rejected when the voter forgets to sign or uses a signature that does not match the one on file with the state, possibly because it is many years old. Election officials are supposed to contact voters in such cases but are not always able to do so.
Voters have until 5 p.m. on Friday to submit a simple affidavit form to “cure” such ballots. With Georgia hanging in the balance as the last votes are counted, national Democrats — including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — are amplifying the message in hopes of salvaging every vote possible.
Nov. 5, 2020, 11:01 p.m. ET
By
Trump supporters rally outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix on Thursday.Credit...Matt York/Associated Press
PHOENIX — Another protest by supporters of President Trump unfolded on Thursday night in front of the Phoenix building where ballots were being counted in Arizona’s largest county.
The mood among the roughly 200 people was somewhat less defiant than a night earlier, when protesters demanded to be allowed into the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. Despite organizers’ pleas to avoid openly carrying firearms, numerous people wielding rifles milled about the crowd on Thursday. Some gave interviews to European television crews.
New protest in front of Phoenix vote counting site. Entrance cordoned off to prevent those gathering from forcing their way inside. Armed pro-Trump protesters arriving pic.twitter.com/JatyIzx31O
Those present did not sound thrilled when Maricopa County officials released the latest vote counts, which still show Joseph R. Biden Jr. ahead of Mr. Trump in what had long been a Republican stronghold.
“Those people inside need to see our presence,” Abelardo Delgado, 54, said about the people counting the remaining ballots.
Mr. Delgado, an auto mechanic and naturalized immigrant from Mexico, said he did not vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 because he considered the real estate developer a racist at the time. But Mr. Delgado changed his views, coming to appreciate Mr. Trump’s anti-abortion stance.
William Rainier, a Phoenix resident wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “FNN — Fake News Network,” said he showed up to exercise his constitutional rights of freedom of speech and assembly.
At one juncture, Mr. Rainier repeatedly taunted a television reporter with profane language over what he described as anti-Trump reporting.
“All of us out here just want the votes to be counted correctly,” said Mr. Rainier, 34, who said he was a landlord. Asked whether he would accept a result in which Mr. Biden wins Arizona, Mr. Rainier said, “If the results are audited and there was no fraud, I think I would.”
Nick Corasaniti in Philadelphia
Philadelphia releases its first batch of results in hours, netting Biden more than 10,000 votes. The Trump lead in Pennsylvania is now around 26,000 votes.
No states were called for either President Trump or Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday, but we got a lot closer to final results. Here’s what happened in the four states that were actively counting ballots today. (Two other uncalled states, Alaska and North Carolina, aren’t expected to significantly update their counts until next week.)
Arizona: Newly counted ballots in Maricopa and Pima Counties narrowed Mr. Biden’s lead in the state from about 69,000 votes to 46,000.
Georgia: Mr. Trump’s lead here, which was over 18,000 at the beginning of the day, has nearly vanished. Mr. Biden now trails by less than 2,000 votes.
Nevada: Mr. Trump had hoped the margin would narrow here, but Mr. Biden expanded his lead instead, from about 8,000 votes to more than 11,000.
Pennsylvania: At the beginning of the day, Mr. Trump led by more than 160,000 votes. By the end of the day, he led by less than 37,000.
Stephanie Saul in New York
Of the votes yet to be counted in Georgia, more than 5,000 come from Clayton County, a heavily Democratic area south of Atlanta.
With more votes coming in from Monroe County in eastern Pennsylvania, Trump’s margin in the state is down to 42,000 — with at least 208,000 ballots left to count statewide.
Senator Mitt Romney walks past reporters asking questions as he heads into a Republican Luncheon last month in Washington, D.C.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times
President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud drew little support from Republican officials on Thursday, with several either rebuking the president or offering statements that stopped far short of endorsing his views.
“Counting every vote is at the heart of democracy,” Senator Mitt Romney of Utah wrote on Twitter, implicitly rejecting Mr. Trump’s extraordinary call for halting vote counts in states where he leads. “Have faith in democracy, in our Constitution, and in the American people,” he said.
“All votes that comply with Pennsylvania law must be counted, regardless of how long the process takes,” Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said in a statement. Though expressing concern that Philadelphia’s vote counting “lacks transparency,” Mr. Toomey concluded that “all parties involved must accept the outcome of the election regardless of whether they won or lost.”
“There is no defense for the President’s comments tonight undermining our Democratic process,” tweeted Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a frequent Trump critic. “No election or person is more important than our Democracy.”
Shortly after Mr. Trump’s remarks at the White House, Vice President Mike Pence issued a statement of support, but one that did not echo the president’s talk of conspiracy and fraud. “I Stand With President @realDonaldTrump. We must count every LEGAL vote,” Mr. Pence tweeted, echoing none of the president’s charges of fraud and conspiracy.
Multiple Republicans indirectly suggested that Mr. Trump had presented no actual evidence of wrongdoing.
“If a candidate believes a state is violating election laws they have a right to challenge it in court & produce evidence in support of their claims,” tweeted Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. He also reposted a tweet from Wednesday in which he said: “Taking days to count legally cast votes is NOT fraud. And court challenges to votes cast after the legal voting deadline is NOT suppression.”
Without naming Mr. Trump, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted that “if you have legit concerns about fraud present EVIDENCE and take it to court. STOP Spreading debunked misinformation.”
“This is getting insane,” he added.
Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted what seemed to be partly a plea and partly a threat:
“If you want to win in 2024 as a Republican. I would probably start saying something. Just saying,” he wrote. But on Thursday night, there was little sign of that happening.
Nov. 5, 2020, 9:35 p.m. ET
By
Harrisburg, Pa.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
PhiladelphiaVictor J. Blue for The New York Times
Washington, D.C.Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
DetroitBryan Denton for The New York Times
PhiladelphiaVictor J. Blue for The New York Times
Here are some of the interesting characters that our photographers captured at the rallies and protests on Day 3.
Alicia Parlapiano in Washington
Maricopa County will post its next report Friday at 11 a.m. ET. Officials there say they have 204,000 more early ballots to process, and a smaller number of provisional and other ballots.
With the update we just got from Maricopa County, Biden’s margin over Trump in Arizona has narrowed to 1.5 points from 2.4 points this morning. About 46,000 votes separate them.
With another batch of votes in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Biden’s lead in Arizona has shrunk. These are the last votes expected to be reported by Maricopa tonight.
Biden continues to improve in Pennsylvania, where he just picked up a net of 2,500 votes in red Mercer County, where Trump currently has 63 percent of the vote.
In Georgia, where Trump’s lead over Biden has shrunk to 3,486, only 18,936 ballots remain uncounted, according to Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state.
Trump’s margin continues to shrink in Pennsylvania as Biden surges in Philadelphia’s suburbs. Updates from Delaware and Bucks counties gave Biden a net gain of 5,400 votes.
Votes are counted at the Fulton County election headquarters in Atlanta.Credit...Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York Times
Nineteen former United States attorneys — all of whom served under Republican presidents — released a statement on Thursday calling President Trump’s legal threats, claims of fraud and false declarations of victory “premature, baseless and reckless.”
“We hereby call upon the president to patiently and respectfully allow the lawful vote-counting process to continue, in accordance with applicable federal and state laws, and to avoid any further comments or other actions which can serve only to undermine our democracy,” wrote the attorneys.
The attorneys countered Mr. Trump’s false suggestions that it is somehow wrong to count ballots after Election Day — something states do in every election. “Whether it takes days, or even weeks, for that process to conclude, it must be allowed to take place in a way that is open, fair and lawful, and without any improper political interference,” they said.
A street party in San Francisco on Tuesday.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times
OAKLAND, Calif. — In the presidential race, California affirmed its reputation as a stronghold for Democrats. But down the ballot, a more complex picture of the state’s voters emerged: one of strong libertarian impulses and resistance to some quintessentially liberal ideas.
In a series of referendums, voters in California rejected affirmative action, decisively shot down an expansion of rent control and eviscerated a law that gives greater labor protections for ride-share and delivery drivers. A measure that would have raised taxes on commercial landlords to raise billions for a state that sorely needs revenue also seemed on track for defeat.
The results provided something of a gut check for liberals in a state that plays a big role in the Democratic Party and often offers insights into where the rest of the nation might head.
“The results in California show the Democrats that you can go too far,” said Bob Shrum, a former Democratic strategist and the director of the Dornsife Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California. “California is a very liberal state that is now resistant to higher taxes and welcoming to the new gig economy, which is where the industry was created.”
It’s not that California is lurching rightward; the state is unwaveringly Democratic up and down the ranks of its government. But these mixed results for liberal viewpoints were not an anomaly.
California has always had competing impulses. The state that is home to Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, also produced icons of conservatism, including Ronald Reagan. Some of the most prominent conservative voices during the Trump presidency hail from California, including Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader; Devin Nunes, the outspoken congressman and staunch Trump ally; and Stephen Miller, the hard-line anti-immigration White House adviser.
Jim Rutenberg in New York
A federal judge denied the Trump campaign’s request to stop vote counting in Philadelphia, but officials agreed to expand the number of people each side could have in the room.
Trump’s remarks had a farewell tone to them as he listed all the obstacles that he is blaming for any loss. The downbeat contrast from his election night tone was startling.
Nov. 5, 2020, 7:29 p.m. ET
By
Biden supporters watched election returns on an iPad in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The election saw the highest turnout in recent memory, and voters didn’t just flock to the polls in droves. They also flocked to news websites.
“Election Day and the day after were record-setting days for The Washington Post, with Nov. 4 hitting our highest number of page views in history by over 40 percent,” Kristine Coratti Kelly, a spokeswoman for The Post, said in an email on Thursday. Traffic to BuzzFeed News was up 13 percent, a spokeswoman said.
Local news sites in battleground states also benefited.
Starting Tuesday afternoon, traffic to The Philadelphia Inquirer website jumped 140 percent over 48 hours and new digital subscriptions were up 83 percent, said Evan Benn, the newspaper’s director of special projects and editorial events. At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, website traffic on Monday doubled that of the previous Monday, and then grew another 41 percent on Tuesday, the day of the election, said Monica Richardson, a senior managing editor.
The election was big business north of the border too. At one point Thursday morning, the 11 stories leading the website of Canada’s The Globe & Mail were all about the U.S. election.
What people wanted to read varied. At The Wall Street Journal, Inquirer and Journal-Constitution, live updates and live results pages were quite popular. The Journal-Constitution also saw strong readership for stories about local races, like the election of the DeKalb County sheriff, and for what Richardson called “utility content,” including articles about when the Georgia Senate runoff election will occur. BuzzFeed.com attracted more readers with lighter election-related content like celebrity voting and memes.
Votebeat, a pop-up newsroom created for the election by an education news nonprofit, Chalkbeat, presciently anticipated a “protracted period of vote counting and litigation” and will operate through the end of the year, said Alison Go, one of its executives. Reporters there, working in a number of states, had an unusual finding: It was hard to get voters to talk to them.
“I think between the pandemic and a lot of the warnings swirling around before Nov. 3, voters were wary and skeptical,” Ms. Go said.
Voters may have been skeptical of talking to reporters, but they certainly weren’t skeptical about reading their work.
Nov. 5, 2020, 7:23 p.m. ET
By
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” President Trump falsely claimed on Thursday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump broke a two-day silence with reporters to deliver a brief statement filled with egregious falsehoods and smears about the election process as workers in a handful of states continued to tabulate votes.
The president painted the election results so far as part of a broad conspiracy to deprive him of a second term by Democrats, election officials in various cities and the news media.
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Mr. Trump began when he took the podium in the White House briefing room, a false statement that cast aspersion on the rest of the election. He offered no evidence; instead, he listed a series of conspiracy theories about why ballots arrived late in some places.
At the same time that he insisted that Democrats were figuring out how many mail-in ballots they needed to counteract his performance in various states, the president listed a series of successful Republican wins on Tuesday and appeared unaware of the cognitive dissonance in saying that other Republicans had won while he lost as he claimed a plot to harm him.
Trump supporters in front of Phoenix City Hall chanted, “We love America, we love the police, four more years!” Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
PHOENIX — About 200 supporters of President Trump gathered in front of the Arizona Republican Party headquarters on Thursday afternoon, after a protest earlier in the day involving about 50 Trump supporters dissipated in front of City Hall in Phoenix.
Jason Steiner, a quality control inspector who held a sign saying “Fake News Fox!!!,” said he showed up to express his disdain for the television network after it called Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“Fox has always represented big business interests,” said Mr. Steiner, 47. “Donald Trump speaks for the people, which is ironic because he’s a billionaire.”
“In every revolution, there’s a second tier of wealthy people who go against the first tier of wealthy people, and Trump is in that second tier,” he added.
Some in the crowd held signs reading “Don’t Steal Elections,” “Shame on Fox News” and “Recall Fontes,” referring to the dissatisfaction among some conservatives with Adrian Fontes, the Democrat who oversees elections in Maricopa County, where a huge final vote-counting effort was underway to help determine the winner of the presidential election.
Protests also took place in areas where the results were settled, like New York, Portland, Washington and Miami.
In Philadelphia, Carol O’Connor, a retiree, urged people to be patient and wait for all votes to be counted.
“To cut off the counting, no, because those votes were in on time,” said Ms. O’Connor, 71. “That’s the process that we have in place, and that’s what we’ve got to roll with right now.”
Much of the ire expressed by Republicans in Phoenix reflected shifts in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs. Maricopa, which accounts for about 60 percent of the state’s population, has gone from being a Republican stronghold to a place where Democrats are gaining ground.
Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, spoke briefly to the crowd about her dissatisfaction with Mr. Fontes before people began chanting “Fire Fontes.”
Maggie Astor in New York
More votes have been reported in Chatham and Clayton Counties, narrowing Trump’s lead in Georgia to less than 4,000.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: It's time to approve Line 3 project for final time - Bemidji Pioneer
0 Response to "Trump vs. Biden: Live Updates - The New York Times"
Post a Comment