Judge pushes USPS to deliver all ballots
PHOENIX: A crowd of Donald Trump supporters, some armed with rifles and handguns, gathered outside an election centre in Arizona yesterday after unsubstantiated rumours that votes for the Republican president were deliberately not being counted.
Chanting ‘‘Stop the steal!’’ and ‘‘Count my vote’’, the mostly unmasked protesters stood in front of the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix, as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden held a razorthin lead in the critical battleground state. Some news outlets have called Arizona for Biden, but Trump’s campaign says it is still in play.
A victory for Biden in Arizona would give the Democrat 11 electoral votes, a major boost in his bid to win the White House, while severely narrowing Trump’s path to reelection, in a state the Republican won in 2016.
On election night Fox News and the Associated Press called Arizona for Biden, even though only just over 70% of the vote had been counted, a move that infuriated Trump and his aides.
Some of the roughly 200 protesters, who were faced by a line of armed county sheriffs, chanted ‘‘Shame on Fox!’’. Some said they came out after a tweet from Mike Cernovich, a rightwing activist.
Chris Michael, of Gilbert, Arizona, said he came to make sure all votes were counted. He said he wanted assurances the counting was done ‘‘ethically and legally’’.
Rumours spread on Facebook some Maricopa votes were not being counted because voters used Sharpie pens to mark their ballots. Local election officials insisted that was not true.
AntiTrump protesters in a host of other cities demanded that vote counting continue. Arrests were made in Denver as protesters clashed with police and during demonstrations in Minneapolis after protesters blocked traffic.
Police arrested 50 antiTrump protesters in New York City and 11 in Portland, Oregon, yesterday. Local partners of Protect the Results, a coalition of more than 165 grassroots organisations, advocacy groups and labour unions, have organised more than 100 events across the country between now and Saturday (local time).
With the count still under way in several key states, Trump has accused the Democrats of trying to steal the election without evidence and filed lawsuits in several states related to votecounting.
Earlier yesterday in downtown Detroit, city election officials blocked about 30 people, mostly Republicans, from entering a votecounting hall amid unfounded claims the vote count was fraudulent.
Trump has filed a lawsuit in Michigan to stop votecounting that the secretary of state called ‘‘frivolous’’.
The protests echoed the ‘‘Brooks Brother riot’’ during the 2000 recount in Florida that ultimately handed the presidency to Republican George W. Bush. A crowd of Republican protesters stormed a building where a hand recount was under way in a heavily Democratic district, forcing poll workers to stop counting ballots.
Among those voters not protesting yesterday, many were in a state of high anxiety.
Trump’s false declaration of victory in the early hours of Wednesday (local time), as ballot counting continued in several pivotal states, roiled Biden’s supporters.
They expressed fears Trump might not accept the election result if he were to lose. Many in Trump’s voter base, meanwhile, believed his unsubstantiated allegations of widespread electoral tampering.
‘‘Election fraud is running rampant,’’ said Trump voter Jimmie Boyd, a North Carolina gun rights activist with ties to local militia groups.
Boyd said he worried ‘‘leftwingers’’ could ‘‘destroy entire cities’’ while protesters on the right would be demonised as ‘‘racist, phobic freaks of nature’’.
WASHINGTON: A judge said yesterday he wanted to ensure all remaining ballots for the closely contested US election were delivered, demanding Postmastergeneral Louis DeJoy answer questions about why the postal service failed to complete a courtordered sweep for undelivered ballots on election day.
‘‘The pressing issues are where are the ballots and how do we get them delivered so they can be counted,’’ US District Judge Emmet Sullivan said in a hearing that included US Postal Service (USPS) official Kevin Bray answering questions about ballot deliveries.
Many states are accepting ballots for up to a week after election day as long as they were postmarked by then. Ballots are still being counted by election officials in battleground states in the contest between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
The postal service is carrying out sweeps and using priority mail networks until Saturday to deliver any remaining ballots. It said yesterday it had completed sweeps late on election day ordered by the judge and turned up just 13 ballots, all in Pennsylvania.
Sullivan had said DeJoy, a Trump appointee, ‘‘is either
Anna Drallios, a Biden voter, was upset by Trump’s questioning of the legitimacy of the election process while demanding a halt to the vote count.
‘‘If we allow our votes to be stolen from us, we are heading toward dictatorship, toward oppression,’’ she said.
The postelection day tension proved hard for many to bear. Some turned to caffeine or sought solace in chores and other distractions.
‘‘It’s like the twilight zone,’’ said Tanya Wojciak, who reckoned she had downed 17 cups of coffee and going to have to be deposed or appear before me and testify under oath about why some measures were not taken’’.
Sullivan had ordered the sweeps in response to lawsuits by groups including Vote Forward, the NAACP and Latino community advocates.
The USPS told Sullivan it could not meet his 3pm Tuesday EST deadline, saying it was not logistically possible.
‘‘The court has been very clear that it expects total compliance,’’ Sullivan said.
‘‘I was just as shocked to hear that nothing else was done after the injunction was issued.’’
Sullivan ordered a new round of sweeps at postal processing centres in Texas ahead of yesterday’s deadline for postal ballots.
Sullivan’s order had covered processing centres in central Pennsylvania, northern New England, greater South Carolina, south Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin and parts of Illinois, Arizona, Alabama and Wyoming, as well as the cities of Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia and Detroit. — Reuters
found herself pacing the floors of her home in Cortland, Ohio, as she watched results trickle in from battleground states deluged by recordbreaking numbers of early mailin ballots.
‘‘Trump’s scary, premature declaration of victory has me unnerved,’’ said Wojciak, who said she voted for Biden even though she is a Republican.
‘‘It’s very important that we make sure that our democracy is maintained,’’ said Meira Harris, a social work student.
‘‘This election has provoked so much anxiety.’’ — Reuters