US election 2020 as it happened: Joe Biden maintains lead over Donald Trump as Arizona, Michigan vote-counting centres swamped by US President's supporters

On the brink: Joe Biden needs to clinch just one more battleground state to defeat President Donald Trump. The Democrat already has won the fiercely contested prizes of Michigan and Wisconsin, part of the "blue wall" that slipped away from Democrats four years ago. Two days after Election Day, neither candidate has amassed the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. But Biden’s victories in the Great Lakes states have him at 264, meaning he is one battleground state away from becoming president-elect.

Trump sues: Trump’s campaign put into action the legal strategy the president had signalled for weeks: attacking the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean his defeat. Democrats scoffed at the legal challenges in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. The filings demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, and raise absentee ballot concerns. The flurry of court action did not seem obviously destined to impact the election’s outcome.

America protests: Dozens of angry supporters of Trump converged on vote-counting centres in Detroit and Phoenix as returns went against the president in the two key states, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete count of the ballots in the still-undecided election took to the streets in cities across the US. The protests came as the president repeatedly insisted without evidence that there were major problems with the voting and the ballot counting, and as Republicans filed suit in multiple states, preparing to contest election results.

Soul searching: The presidential election postmortem underway in Florida is especially wrenching for Democrats. The second-guessing has begun amid another high-profile loss at the ballot box. Some Democrats unsurprised by their loss in the state to Trump say Biden’s weakness with the Hispanic community, particularly in the Miami area, may be a symptom of deeper problems.

with AP

On Wednesday the Trump campaign announced an array of different legal efforts to fight Joe Biden's apparently impending Electoral College victory.

This included attempts to stop the vote counting in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and a motion to be heard by the Supreme Court in the case about ballots that arrived or will arrive in Pennsylvania after 8pm on election day. The campaign also filed a lawsuit in Georgia claiming a poll worker improperly mixed up absentee ballots, and asked for late-arriving ballots to be segregated. Although Georgia is close, this isn't the stuff of which election-changing lawsuits are made. (Trump's lawyers also say they will seek a recount in Wisconsin; but that is extremely unlikely to erase Biden's roughly 20,000 vote margin there.)

Start with the attempts to stop the counting. These are legally vacuous and don't pass the laugh test. Trump's Michigan filing asks the state courts to stop tallying votes, alleging that the state's absentee vote counters are proceeding without the presence of election inspectors and vote "challengers" from each party, as Michigan law requires. The problem with this argument is that, as far as is possible to determine, Michigan is indeed allowing Democratic and Republican inspectors and challengers.

So the Trump campaign is further arguing that the state violated the law because it has not shown the Trump "challengers" the video of the drop-off boxes from which the absentee ballots are being taken. Strange as it sounds, the Trump campaign seems to be arguing that the counting of votes should be stopped because his representatives haven't been able to see video of the drop-off boxes.

Michigan law does seem to say that "ballot containers" should be surveilled by video. But there doesn't seem to be anything in the law requiring the campaigns to see the video of drop-off boxes. In any case, it would make no sense whatever for courts to order the counting to stop as a remedy for any failure to provide required video. The logical thing would be for the court to order the state to provide the video.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Trump campaign is desperately trying to stop Michigan from finishing its count. Trump is behind in the Michigan count, so the plan can't be to claim victory on the basis of votes already counted. It must be to escape the potential conclusion that Biden has won the election if he wins Michigan and a handful of other states.

Speaking of those other states, in Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign has filed (or said it will file) various challenges. One was a lawsuit filed on Monday evening challenging the secretary of state's instructions allowing people who made mistakes in their mail-in ballots to correct the errors. This suit may have a better chance of succeeding, given that the instructions came at the last minute. Another is an attempt to stop the vote counting, apparently using a theory similar to the one the campaign's trying in Michigan. In Pennsylvania, it's not clear that a complaint has actually been filed yet, but there is little reason to expect the logic would be any better than in the Michigan complaint.

Then there's the Supreme Court motion. Trump will, if granted leave to intervene, ask the justices to exclude mail-in ballots that arrived after the polls closed. The Supreme Court will probably allow Trump to intervene, given that this lawsuit predated the election, but that doesn't guarantee they'd rule in favour of Trump.

We know there are four votes - the three liberals plus Chief Justice John Roberts - to reject Trump's claim. Three conservative justices more or less invited this lawsuit and can be expected to support Trump's request. That leaves two swing conservatives, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.

It's conceivable albeit outrageous that the conservative majority could throw out these votes, even though they were cast by people who had been previously assured by courts that their votes would be counted. But as bad as that is, it might not guarantee a Trump victory.

Even if the justices go Trump's way, it won't matter unless the election comes down to Pennsylvania and unless those late-arriving ballots provide the margin of victory needed to win the presidency. This nightmare scenario would be Bush v. Gore all over again, and it still can't be excluded. But the scenario is becoming less likely by the moment.

The upshot is that Trump's legal strategy is looking weak. It's getting harder to picture how he could use the courts to stop or reverse vote counting.

That said, Trump pretty clearly isn't going to stop claiming the election was stolen just because he loses in court - and loses in the popular vote and the Electoral College. Maybe the lawsuits are mainly intended as preliminary efforts in what will be a developing strategy to delegitimise the outcome. We will know soon enough.

The Washington Post

Jimmy Kimmel echoed Fallon’s exhaustion, saying the past day had been a "pollercoaster of emotions and nausea".

On A Late Show, Stephen Colbert said: "Trump’s mishandling of the virus may have played a large part in Biden’s win, because recently, Wisconsin has become a COVID-19 hot spot. But with this win, Democrats across the country can breathe a little easier – except for the ones in Wisconsin, because, again, it’s a COVID-19 hot spot."

Jimmy Kimmel also enlisted former Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for a political edition of the show's "Mean Tweets" segment ...

with The New York Times

The lush, green village in the south of the country has also been decked out in posters of Harris, with prayers offered at the local Hindu temple.

Biden leads the count and has predicted he will win but closely contested states – including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina – were still tallying votes, leaving the election outcome uncertain.

Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan and his family moved to Chennai nearly 90 years ago. He retired there as a high-ranking government official.

Harris, who was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who both immigrated to the United States to study, visited Thulasendrapuram when she was five and has repeatedly recalled walks with her grandfather on the beaches of Chennai.

"It's a total disgrace," said Bachir Diallo, a Guinean mining executive. "Such a mess is worthy of a banana republic."

As the vote count pointed towards a victory for Democrat Joe Biden, others felt a sharp sense of irony seeing events play out in a developed nation whose authorities regularly admonish African leaders for not respecting democratic norms.

When the US Embassy in Guinea's neighbour Ivory Coast called on Wednesday for dialogue and commitment to the rule of law following another disputed presidential election, it triggered an avalanche of reactions.

"I believe the playground response is 'why you talking about yourself?'" one Twitter user retorted.

"What we are seeing from Trump is not different from what we have been seeing in African politics. However, it is terrifying to see this in America," said Tito Kisiya, a sales executive in Tanzania, whose presidential election last week drew criticism from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Even so, some who followed the US election found positives to take away.

"It's calm, and there is no violence," said Viviane Asseke, a schoolteacher in Ivory Coast, where more than 10 people have died in clashes since the president won a third term that opponents consider unconstitutional.

"It makes you want to vote."

Reuters