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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Confident Biden edges ahead in US election
Demonstrators hold signs during a march to “Count Every Vote, Protect Every Person” in Seattle, Washington, on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
PATIENT WAITING: Momentum moved to former US vice president Joe Biden, who said that ‘when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners’
/ AFP, WASHINGTON
The knife-edge US presidential race early yesterday tilted toward former US vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate, with wins in Michigan and Wisconsin bringing him close to a majority, but US President Donald Trump claimed that he was being cheated, and went to court to try and stop vote counting.
Tallying of votes continued through a second night in the remaining battleground states, where huge turnout and a mountain of mail-in ballots sent by voters trying to avoid exposure to COVID-19 made the job all the more difficult.
Both candidates still had paths to winning the White House by accumulating the required threshold of 270 of the electoral votes awarded to whichever candidate wins the popular vote in a given state.
However, momentum moved to Biden, who made a televised speech from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, to say that “when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
By flipping the northern battlegrounds of Michigan and Wisconsin, and also winning formerly pro-Trump Arizona, Biden reached 264 electoral votes against 214 so far for Trump.
To reach 270, he was hoping next to add the six electoral votes from Nevada, where he had a small and shrinking lead, or, even better, the larger prizes of hard-fought Georgia or Pennsylvania.
In stark contrast with Trump’s unprecedented rhetoric about being cheated, Biden sought to project calm, reaching out to a nation torn by four years of polarizing leadership and traumatized by the COVID-19 pandemic — with new daily infections on Wednesday close to hitting 100,000 for the first time.
“We have to stop treating our opponents as enemies,” Biden, 77, said. “What brings us together as Americans is so much stronger than anything that can tear us apart.”
However, Trump, 74, claimed victory unilaterally and made clear that he would not accept the reported results, issuing unprecedented complaints of fraud.
“The damage has already been done to the integrity of our system, and to the presidential election itself,” he wrote on Twitter, alleging that “secretly dumped ballots” had been added in Michigan.
Trump’s campaign announced lawsuits in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia and demanded a recount in Wisconsin.
Tension also shifted to the streets, even if so far there has not been the kind of unrest that some feared just ahead of the election, prompting businesses in several major city centers to board up windows.
In Detroit, Michigan, a Democratic stronghold that is majority black, a crowd of mostly white Trump supporters chanted: “Stop the count,” and tried to barge into an election office before being blocked by security.
US news networks showed an aggressive pro-Trump crowd also gathering outside a vote counting office in the important Arizona county of Maricopa, which includes Phoenix.
Burly law enforcement officers formed a protective line at the facility’s doors.
Some of the protesters openly carried firearms, which is legal in the state, while people chanted: “Count the votes.”
Just before midnight, Maricopa authorities posted new vote totals, with Trump slashing Biden’s Arizona vote lead from 79,000 to fewer than 69,000, a gap of 2.4 percent with 86 percent of precincts reporting.
Georgia’s largest county of Fulton, which includes parts of Atlanta, was processing ballots through the night.
Over a 90-minute period, Biden narrowed Trump’s lead there from 29,000 votes to 23,000, with 95 percent of precincts reporting.
The tight nature of Georgia’s race — Biden trails Trump by half a percent — raises the prospect of a recount.
The US election — usually touted as an example to newer democracies around the world — brought statements of international concern, with German Minister of Defense Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer warning of a “very explosive situation.”
An observer mission from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitors votes throughout the West and in the former Soviet Union, found no evidence of election fraud and said that Trump’s “baseless allegations” eroded trust in democracy.
Unless Biden racks up a winning score earlier, the whole contest could eventually wind up being decided by the winner of Pennsylvania, where Trump’s initially big lead dwindled rapidly.
The state is a major target for Trump campaign lawyers, who have already challenged its rule on allowing mailed-in ballots received after election day to be counted in the US Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said that everyone should be “patient” and promised that all votes would be “counted fully.”
The tight White House race and recriminations evoked memories of the 2000 election between the Republican candidate, former Texas governor George W. Bush, and the Democratic candidate, former US vice president 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.
The US Elections Project estimated that voter turnout would reach a record 160 million, including more than 101.1 million early voters.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
Supporters of US President Donald Trump bang on a partition and chant slogans outside a room where absentee ballots are being counted at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan, on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
A currency dealer monitors exchange rates as a screen shows results of the US presidential elections in a trading room at KEB Hana Bank in Seoul yesterday. Photo: AFP
