Trump supporters descend on Arizona voting centre
Scores of Donald Trump supporters converged on a vote-counting centre in Phoenix, in the key battleground state of Arizona, as backers of both the president and Joe Biden took to the streets in several US cities.
The protesters in Phoenix on Wednesday evening, some of whom were reported to be carrying weapons, according to the local TV network ABC 15 Arizona, briefly tried to push into the centre before being asked to leave. They appeared to be a mix of Trump supporters and several far-right figures familiar at demonstrations in the state.
Arizona has been called by some media outlets for Biden, who holds a slim lead in the state. But the Trump campaign tried to insist it had the votes to overtake him. According to the most recent tally, Biden had a lead of nearly 69,000 votes.
In contrast to pro-Trump protests seen in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the president’s supporters called for vote counts to be halted, protesters in Phoenix chanted “stop the steal!” and demanded that remaining ballots be tabulated.
Protests, sometimes about the election and sometimes about racial inequality, also occurred on Wednesday in at least half a dozen cities, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and San Diego.
Police in Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, arrested more than a dozen people as hundreds took to the streets to demand a full count of all presidential election votes and a halt to Trump’s court challenges to stop vote counts in some key battleground states.
Although the protests were largely small and peaceful they underlined the lingering fear of disturbances that has hung over the election.
The situation in Arizona has been complicated by the decision by Fox News and the Associated Press – the latter’s US voting assessments are used by the Guardian – to call the state for Biden on Wednesday when there were still hundreds of thousands of votes to be counted.
On Wednesday night, with Biden’s lead narrowing in the state, a newly tallied batch of 74,000 votes from Maricopa county, benefiting Trump 59% to 41%, were released.
The remaining Arizona votes to be counted, however, are mainly from the largely pro-Democrat Pima county, which is expected to benefit Biden. Maricopa county’s next update is not due until after 9pm ET on Thursday (2am GMT Friday).
Despite the Trump campaign’s insistence that uncounted votes could swing Arizona, other observers were sceptical. Philip Bump, an analyst with the Washington Post, suggested that even if the advantage for Trump in the last batch of votes to be released held firm, for the rest of the uncounted votes it could “close most, though not all, of the existing gap”.
The protests at the Maricopa county election centre in downtown Phoenix came as Trump insisted falsely that there were major problems with the voting and the ballot counts, especially with mail-in votes, and as Republicans filed lawsuits in various states.
Wearing Trump gear, the Phoenix protesters filled much of the parking lot at the election centre, and members of the crowd chanted “Fox News sucks!” in anger over the network declaring Biden the winner in Arizona.
Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican and staunch Trump supporter, joined the crowd, declaring: “We’re not going to let this election be stolen. Period.”
Observers from both of the main political parties were inside the election centre as ballots were processed and counted, and the procedure was livestreamed online at all times.
Several sheriff’s deputies blocked the entrance to the building and the vote-counting went on into the night, said Megan Gilbertson, a spokeswoman for Maricopa county elections department.
Two top county officials, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, issued a statement expressing concern about how misinformation had spread about the integrity of the election process.
“Everyone should want all the votes to be counted, whether they were mailed or cast in person. An accurate vote takes time … This is evidence of democracy, not fraud,” said the statement signed by Clint Hickman, the Republican chair of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, and the Democratic supervisor, Steve Gallardo.