APPARENT WINNER
Federal agency ascertains Biden asus election victor, Trump vows to fight on
After weeks of delay, the federal government acknowledged Presidentelect Joe Biden was the “apparent winner” of the November 3 election yesterday and cleared the way for co-operation on a transition of power.
Trump, who had refused to concede the election, said in a tweet that he is directing his team to co-operate on the transition but is vowing to keep up the fight.
Administrator Emily Murphy made the determination after Trump efforts to subvert the vote failed across battleground states, citing, “recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results”.
Yohannes Abraham, the executive director of the Biden transition, said in a statement that the decision “is a needed step to begin tackling the challenges facing our nation, including getting the pandemic under control and our economy back on track”.
He added: “In the days ahead, transition officials will begin meeting with federal officials to discuss the pandemic response, have a full accounting of our national security interests, and gain complete understanding of the Trump administration’s efforts to hollow out government agencies.”
Murphy, a Trump appointee, had faced bipartisan criticism for failing to begin the transition process sooner, preventing Biden’s team from working with career agency officials on plans for his administration, including in critical national security and public health areas.
The move came after President Donald Trump suffered yet more legal and procedural defeats in his futile effort to overturn the election with baseless claims of fraud.
Trump’s effort to stave off the inevitable — formal recognition of his defeat — is facing increasingly stiff resistance from the courts and fellow Republicans with just three weeks to go until the Electoral College meets to certify Biden’s victory.
Time and again, Trump’s challenges and baseless allegations of widespread conspiracy and fraud have been met with rejection as states move forward with confirming their results.
In Michigan, the Board of State Canvassers, which has two
Republicans and two Democrats, confirmed the state results on a three-zero vote with one GOP abstention. Trump and his allies had hoped to block the vote to allow time for an audit of ballots in Wayne County, where Trump has claimed without evidence that he was the victim of fraud.
Biden crushed the President by more than 330,000 votes there.
Under Michigan law, Biden claims all 16 electoral votes.
Biden won the state by 2.8 percentage points — a larger margin than in other states where Trump is contesting the results like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Some Trump allies had expressed hope that state lawmakers could intervene in selecting Republican electors in states that do not certify. That longshot and legally dubious bid is no longer possible in Michigan.
Mary Ellen Gurewitz, an attorney for the state Democratic Party, told the canvassers that attacks on the election results were “part of a racist campaign, directed by soon-to-be former President Trump, to disparage the cities in this country with large black populations, including Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee”.
Trump has tried to defy the results of the election through the courts.
Having no luck there, he moved on to trying to personally influence local lawmakers to ignore the popular vote and appoint Republican electors, a strategy that would send Americans into the streets in protest, election law experts have said.
Trump was facing setbacks in other battleground states as well.
In Pennsylvania, a conservative Republican judge shot down the Trump campaign’s biggest legal effort with a scathing ruling that asked why he would disenfranchise 7 million voters with no evidence and an inept legal argument at best.
But Trump’s lawyers still hope to block the state’s certification, quickly appealing to the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
Biden won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes. Other litigation has failed to change a single vote.
Pennsylvania county election boards were voting yesterday, the state deadline, on whether to certify local election results to the Department of State.
The boards in two populous counties divided along party lines, with majority Democrats in both places voting to certify.
After all counties have sent certified results to Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, she must then tabulate, compute and canvass votes for all races. The law requires her to perform that task quickly but does not set a specific deadline.
In Wisconsin, a recount in the state’s two largest liberal counties moved into its fourth day at a slow pace, with election officials in Milwaukee County complaining that Trump observers were hanging up the process with frequent challenges. Trump’s hope of reversing Biden’s victory there depends on disqualifying thousands of absentee ballots — including the in-person absentee ballot cast by one of Trump’s own campaign attorneys in Dane County. — AP