America is emerging from one of the most important elections in its recent history under the shadow of long and bitter internecine strife in a deeply divided and anxious nation.
Donald Trump’s declaration of victory with crucial results still to come in, false accusation of fraud, and the threat to go to the Supreme Court to stop vote counting, pointed the way towards prolonged legal battles and confrontations on the streets.
The president had won in a series of important battlegrounds by the early morning including Florida, Ohio and Iowa ending the prospect of a Democrat landslide. But Joe Biden’s probable victory in Arizona and the expectation of success in a number of key northern swing states left the result hanging in the balance.
Soon after Biden spoke, Trump had tweeted that he was “up big” and that “they are trying to STEAL the election”. Twitter marked the claims as “disputed and might be misleading”.
Then shortly after midnight the president declared in the White House that he had won the election and that he would go to the Supreme Court to get vote counting stopped. He demanded that votes must be counted to the full in places like Arizona, where he was behind, and called for count to be stopped where he was ahead.
“We did win this election,” said Trump. “So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop,” said Trump, listing as victories in a number of states in which he had won the vote and some, like Georgia and Pennsylvania, where he was yet to do so.
Biden’s campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, called the President’s remarks “outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect” accusing him of “a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens”.
She added: “Nearly a hundred million people cast their ballot before election day in the belief – with the assurance of state officials – that their votes would be counted, now Donald Trump is trying to invalidate the ballot of every voter who relied on these assurances.”
Biden urged patience, pointing out that counting had taken days in previous elections and may take even longer this time because of the increase in mail due to the pandemic. “It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who has won this election, that’s the decision of the American people,” he said.
The scenario of Trump announcing victory and then seeking to stop postal vote tallies had long been seen as a possibility. The Biden campaign stressed that they had a legal team on 24 hours standby to counter any move the Trump team may make in the Supreme Court and elsewhere.
Independent