Wednesday afternoon, Joe Biden inched ever closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to secure the White House. The Democratic nominee flipped Michigan and Wisconsin, two states President Donald Trump won in 2016. As the effort to rebuild the infamous “Blue Wall” of battleground states in the Great Lakes began to hinge upon Pennsylvania, the path simultaneously became unclear for the President.
“We once again proved that democracy is the heartbeat of our nation,” Biden said from Wilmington, Delaware. “Just as it has been for more than two centuries. Even in the face of a pandemic, more Americans voted in this election than ever before. Over 150 million votes were cast. That is just extraordinary. If we had any doubts, we shouldn’t any longer: Government of, by, and for the people is very much alive in the United States of America. Here, the people rule. Power can’t be taken or asserted. It flows from the people. It is their will that determines who will serve as the President of this great nation. And their will alone.”
Biden’s speech sounded conciliatory compared to the bombastic tone set by the President at 2:21am Wednesday morning. President Trump arrived at the East Room of the White House primed for a party and falsely claimed he had won. He vowed to take his case to the Supreme Court.
“We were getting ready for a big celebration,” Trump said. “We were winning everything and all of the sudden it was just called off.”
Trump claimed he won Georgia and said, “they would never catch us.”
However, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania were too close to call at that point in time. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would later say “claiming you’ve won the election is different from finishing the counting.”
102 million Americans voted early in the 2020 Election Cycle.
As the votes were counted in Georgia, the focus was magnified upon Fulton County, the county seat of Atlanta. When the county resumed counting ballots at 8:30 am, Trump led Biden by 372,000 votes. In the sixteen hours since Biden has drastically reduced the lead to about 28,000 votes according to CNN and the New York Times.
“It is a time-consuming process,” said Richard Barron, the Elections Director for Fulton County. “We adjudicated over 123,000 ballots. “Once they get to the scanner, there is a vote review panel over there, and we are adjudicating them from there. The only ballots that are adjudicated are if we have a ballot in which there is some question as to how the computer reads it. So the vote review panel then determines voter intent.”
As for Biden, he was happy with the race he’d run with his running mate, Kamala Harris. Biden surpassed the 70 million vote mark, the highest amount any candidate secured in U.S. history.
“Of special significance to me is that we have won with a majority of the American people,” Biden said. “And every indication is that majority will grow. We have a popular vote lead of nearly 3 million votes. And every indication is that will grow too. Indeed, Senator Harris and I are on track to win more votes than any ticket in the history of this country has ever won for President and Vice President. Over 70 million votes. I am very proud of our campaign.”
