President Donald Trump has again demanded that election officials stop the counting of votes in the country’s November 3 election.
“STOP THE COUNT!,” the president tweeted on Thursday, two days after the presidential election. He has spent the past few days in the White House, reportedly speaking to advisers about the race.
A few minutes later, he added: ‘ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!’ Twitter immediately flagged the tweet as disputed and possibly misleading.
On Wednesday, Trump accused ”surprise ballot dumps” in key states where he was leading as the reason why he is lagging behind his rival Joe Biden.
Trump’s Democratic opponent Joe Biden, is closing in on victory as election officials tallied votes in the handful of states that will determine the outcome.
He is projected to win Wisconsin and is leading in Nevada and Arizona and closing in on Trump in both Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Some of the outstanding votes in the two last states are clustered in places analysts say are expected to lean Democratic – like the Atlanta and Philadelphia areas.
To capture the White House, a candidate must amass at least 270 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College.
The Republican president, who during the long and bitter campaign attacked the integrity of the American voting system, has alleged fraud without providing evidence, filed lawsuits and called for at least one recount.
Trump has to win the states where he is still ahead, including North Carolina, plus either Arizona or Nevada to triumph and avoid becoming the first incumbent US president to lose a re-election bid since fellow Republican George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Trump’s campaign called for a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden led by roughly 21,000 votes out of 3.3 million cast, a margin slim enough to entitle him to a recount. However, elections experts said a recount in Wisconsin was seen as unlikely to alter the result.
His campaign also filed lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania to stop vote counting. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, in charge of elections, called the Trump team’s lawsuit “frivolous.”
The counting and court challenges set the stage for days, if not weeks of uncertainty before December 8, the deadline to resolve election disputes. The president is sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021.
Rita Osakwe