Trump, Biden make late bids to win voters
President warns of fraud; rival issues closing message
PITTSBURGH — President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden launched a daylong blitz of last-minute rallies in critical battleground states on Monday, the final full day of campaigning ahead of the election.
Trump cast doubt in advance on the election results, while his Democratic challenger pushed ahead on offense as both men campaigned in fiercely contested states.
The president threatened legal action to stop counting beyond Election Day. Trump argued that if Pennsylvania ballot-counting takes several days, as is allowed, then “cheating can happen like you have never seen.”
Biden, in Pittsburgh, pushed a voting-rights message to a mostly Black audience, declaring that Trump believes “only wealthy folks should vote” and describing covid-19 as a “mass casualty event for Black Americans.”
“We’re done with the chaos, we’re done with the tweets, the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility,” said Biden, whose campaign has focused on increasing turnout for Black voters, who could prove the difference in several battleground states.
Trump spent the final full campaign day sprinting through five rallies, from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. Biden devoted most of his time to Pennsylvania, where a win would leave Trump with an exceedingly narrow path. He also dipped into Ohio, a show of confidence in a state that Trump won by 8 percentage points four years ago.
The two men delivered their final messages, with Biden emphasizing the pandemic. He declared that
“the first step to beating the virus is beating Donald Trump,” and he promised he would retain the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom the president has talked of firing.
Trump, meanwhile, made only passing mention of what his aides believe are his signature accomplishments — the nation’s economic rebound and the recent installation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — and focused instead on the integrity of the election. He also decried the media’s coverage of the campaign.
“I have been under siege illegally for 3½ years. I wonder what it would be like if we didn’t have all of this horrible stuff. We’d have a very, very calm situation,” said Trump at an evening rally in Michigan. “People see that we fight, and I’m fighting for you. I’m fighting to survive. You have to survive.”
Biden announced an unusual move to campaign on Election Day, saying he would head to Philadelphia and his native Scranton, Pa., today as part of a get-outthe-vote effort. His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, will visit Detroit, a heavily Black city in battleground Michigan, and both of their spouses will hit the road, too. Trump, as of Monday evening, was not scheduled to travel on Election Day.
More than 93 million votes have already been cast, through early voting or mail-in ballots, which could lead to delays in tabulation. Trump has spent months saying the votes would be ripe for fraud.
PENNSYLVANIA BALLOTS
Trump rallied in Scranton on Monday, underscoring the importance of the state’s northeast counties, as he zeroed in on Pennsylvania’s process to count votes. He has used stark terms to threaten litigation to stop the tabulation of ballots arriving after Election Day — counting that is allowed with earlier postmarks in some states.
The president claimed that delayed results would be “dangerous” for the country and would open the door to “cheating.”
“I’m just so tired of some of these horrible political decisions that are being made. It’s a shame, it’s a shame,” Trump said in Fayetteville, N.C. “You know, I won’t get into it too much, but I’m going to start getting into it because they’re hurting our country.”
At his rally in Avoca, Pa., Trump again suggested that late-arriving ballots could lead to chaos and fraud, calling the circumstance of an unknown election result “physically dangerous.”
The president has said that “we’re going in with our lawyers” as soon as the polls close in Pennsylvania, and on Monday he spoke about the Supreme Court decision to grant an extension to count the votes after today.
“They made a very dangerous situation, and I mean dangerous, physically dangerous, and they made it a very, very bad, they did a very bad thing for this state,” Trump declared. He said of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf: “Please don’t cheat because we’re all watching. We’re all watching you, governor.”
There is already an appeal pending at the Supreme Court over the counting of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania that are received in the mail in the three days after the election.
The state’s top court ordered the extension, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block it, though conservative justices expressed interest in taking up the propriety of the three added days after the election. Those ballots are being kept separate in case the litigation goes forward. The issue could assume enormous importance if the late-arriving ballots could tip the outcome.
One of Biden’s top legal advisers, Bob Bauer, pushed back at Trump’s promise of mobilizing his lawyers after polls close to challenge certain ballots.
“It’s very telling that President Trump is focused not on his voters but on his lawyers, and his lawyers are not going to win the election for him,” Bauer said. “We are fully prepared for any legal hijinks of one kind or another. We’re not worried about it.”
UNCERTAIN OF RESULT
As the hours ticked down to Election Day, neither campaign expressed certainty in the final result. Both campaigns acknowledged today’s turnout could swing the final Electoral College result. Republicans were counting on a large showing for Trump and a poor showing by Democrats, who they say are more fearful of voting in person.
“Trump defied oddsmakers and defied pollsters by getting new voters to the polls — people who hadn’t voted in a long time,” said Bryan Lanza, an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign. “There’s probably about 15% of social conservatives who didn’t vote in 2016, who are supporting President Trump, and if you get them to turn out now, that may be the margin he needs.”
Democrats expressed confidence that they now find themselves in, at minimum, a better position than four years ago, when Trump outperformed his poll numbers.
“Whereas four years ago, you could see red flags in the data, even for people like me who didn’t want to see red flags, you don’t see as many red flags right now,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist working with independent groups to defeat Trump.
In Florida, Democrats admitted concern about early-voting numbers in Miami, traditionally a Democratic stronghold. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has committed at least $100 million to winning the state, added another $500,000 over the weekend to that city’s television market, with an ad that featured former President Barack Obama praising Biden.
BIDEN’S PUSH
Biden’s team pushed into states Trump won handily in 2016, hoping to deliver an election night knockout blow that could prevent further Republican challenges.
Biden said he returned to Ohio at the urging of Sen. Sherrod Brown and other Ohio Democrats in Congress, suggesting a final, late visit could secure a win. And Obama made one of his final campaign stops in Georgia.
“I didn’t originally plan to come to Georgia. I told Michelle, I’m sorry, Baby, I got to go to Georgia. This is a big deal,” said Obama, noting Democrats’ hopes that they could deliver a victory in the former GOP stronghold. “Georgia could be the state; Georgia could be the place.”
But even as Biden enjoyed strong poll numbers, the move to expand the map revived anxiety among Democrats recalling Trump’s 2016 upset over Clinton, whose forays into red states may have contributed to losing longtime party strongholds.
TEXAS RULING
Also on Monday, Democrats celebrated a decision by a federal judge to reject another last-ditch Republican effort to invalidate nearly 127,000 votes in Houston because the ballots were cast at drive-thru polling centers established during the pandemic.
The lawsuit was brought by conservative Texas activists who have railed against expanded voting access in Harris County, where a record 1.4 million early votes have already been cast. The county is the nation’s thirdmost populous and a crucial battleground in Texas, where Trump and Republicans are bracing for the closest election in decades.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s decision to hear arguments on the brink of Election Day drew concern from voting-rights activists, and it came after the Texas Supreme Court rejected a nearly identical challenge over the weekend.
Hanen said those who oppose drive-thru centers — who were represented by former Harris County GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill — had no standing to bring a lawsuit. He added that people had already voted and that conservative activists had months to bring a challenge sooner.
But Hanen still expressed doubts about whether Texas law allowed anyone to vote from their car, even during a pandemic.
“I would not vote in a drive-thru just out of my concern as to whether that’s legal or not,” Hanen said.
Woodfill filed a notice of appeal Monday evening to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. After Hanen’s ruling, he accused Harris County officials of using their office to help Democrats win.
“If Harris County goes against Trump in large enough numbers, then we could lose Texas. And if Trump loses Texas, then we lose the national election,” Woodfill said after the ruling. “As far as I’m concerned, this is ground zero.”
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Zeke Miller, Will Weissert, Alexandra Jaffe, Nomaan Merchant, Paul J. Weber, Bill Barrow and Jake Bleiberg of The Associated Press; and by Michael Scherer, Toluse Olorunnipa, Rosalind S. Helderman, Amy Gardner, Dan Simmons and Missy Ryan of The Washington Post.