Fight unlikely to end at the ballot box
Legal chall enges expected
U. S. President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden traded barbs on Monday and exhorted last- minute voters to turn out as they stumped in battleground states on the final day of a polarizing campaign that has shattered early voting records.
Even as the candidates made their final arguments, however, their campaigns were already laying the groundwork for post- election disputes.
Trump, who is trailing in national opinion polls, has suggested he would deploy lawyers if states are still counting votes after Election Day. His deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, said the campaign would fight any Democratic attempt to “subvert state deadlines for receiving and counting ballots.”
In response, Biden campaign manager Jennifer O’malley Dillon reminded reporters on Monday that states routinely needed time after election night to finish counting votes.
“Under no scenario will Donald Trump be declared a victor on election night,” she said.
The election has already prompted an unprecedented wave of litigation over whether to adjust voting rules in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Monday, a federal judge in Texas rejected a Republican bid to throw out about 127,000 votes already cast at drive- through voting sites in the Democratic- leaning Houston area.
At a rally in Scranton in eastern Pennsylvania, Trump reminded an enthusiastic crowd that he won the state in 2016 despite polls suggesting he would lose and warned that election officials’ plan to count ballots up to three days after Election Day was a “dangerous situation.”
“You have to have a date. You can’t extend dates,” he said.
In the western Pennsylvania town of Monaca, Biden told supporters that the country’s future rested in their hands.
“What happens tomorrow will determine what this country will look like for generations,” he said.
Despite Biden’s national polling lead, the race in swing states is seen as close enough that Trump could still piece together the 270 votes needed to prevail in the state- bystate Electoral College system that determines the winner.
After visits to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Trump was headed to Wisconsin and Michigan — four states he won narrowly in 2016.
Biden, who has made Trump’s handling of the pandemic the central theme of his campaign, spoke in Ohio and Pennsylvania to much smaller gatherings. He was set to hold an evening drive- in rally in Pittsburgh alongside singer Lady Gaga.
The latest Reuters/ Ipsos poll in Florida, a perennial swing state, showed Biden with a 50 per cent- 46 per cent lead, a week after the two were in a statistical tie.
Early voting has surged to levels never before seen in U. S. elections. A record- setting 97.3 million early votes have been cast either in person or by mail, according to the U. S. Elections Project.
The number is equal to 70 per cent of the entire voter turnout for the 2016 election and represents about 40 per cent of all Americans who are legally eligible to vote.
That unprecedented level of early voting includes 60 million mail- in ballots that could take days or weeks to be counted in some states.
Some states, including critical Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, do not start processing mail- in votes until Election Day, slowing the process.
In a sign of how volatile the election could be, buildings in several cities were boarded up, including around the White House.
The FBI was investigating an incident in Texas when a pro-trump convoy of vehicles surrounded a tour bus carrying Biden campaign staff. The caravan prompted the Biden campaign to cancel at least two of its Texas events, as Democrats accused the president of encouraging supporters to engage in acts of intimidation.
In Washington, 250 National Guard troops were reportedly on standby. However, Muriel Bowser, the mayor, said she had not yet decided whether to use the guard in the event of election violence.
Black Lives Matter protesters planned an eight-hour election event outside the White House with a big screen showing results.
In New York, caravans of hundreds of vehicles, driven by flag- waving supporters of Trump, blocked two busy highways. Some 300 cars drove to the Mario Cuomo bridge where drivers in “Trump 2020” T- shirts chanted “USA, USA, USA,” before police arrived and escorted them away.