Suspicion and anger after key battleground states with Trump ahead put a lid on vote counting

Four key battleground states including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, and Georgia halted vote counting last night to resume at different specified times. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots are yet to be counted and the 2020 presidential race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden is still undetermined.

Originally, both Nevada and Georgia stopped last night and stated they would begin counting this morning. Nevada is now saying it will be Thursday before they begin counting again. Some counties in Pennsylvania will not start counting mail-in votes until later this afternoon.

All records were broken in connection to mail-in ballots and early voting in 2020. Many attribute that to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Democrats urged their supporters to vote early and by mail and the Republicans urged their supporters to vote on election day in person.

Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin only began processing absentee ballots on or just prior to Election Day due to legal challenges by Republicans on the constitutionality of the voting process.

Both candidates declared victory last night but neither has actually won the election yet until the ballots are counted and verified. There are still millions of ballots that need to be tabulated.

Do you see the playbook? It’s the same in every close state. Trump doing well, leading, and they shutdown the urban centers to try and pick up the price tomorrow.

Philly
Pittsburgh
Detroit
Milwaukee
Atlanta

It’s transparent.

— Chris Buskirk (@thechrisbuskirk) November 4, 2020

The Republicans and their legal team are ready for a large-scale legal battle over the election results and they are prepared to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. “We have thousands of volunteer lawyers and several law firms already on retainer in these battleground states,” said RNC spokesperson Mandi Merritt.

Democrats have also prepared for a legal fight with an army of attorneys on standby.

Pennsylvania is a key state in determining who the next president will be. Counties started making their own decisions on how to prioritize the crush of early ballots that had to be counted. The counties that are delaying counting until Wednesday are Democrat strongholds.

In Montgomery County, three Republicans observing the processing of mail-in votes described to a federal court how they saw absentee ballots with possible technical issues and believed elections officials might impermissibly try to give voters opportunities to fix ballots with issues that would have caused them to be thrown out. The Republicans alleged that the county had begun processing mail-in ballots too early and was illegally trying to allow voters to fix defects.

GOP Rep. Mike Kelly and others filed a lawsuit in state court Tuesday evening accusing the Pennsylvania secretary of state of illegally advising that provisional ballots could be offered to absentee voters whose ballots would be rejected.

WHO STOPPED THE COUNT? Who has that much power? #Trump2020 #Trumpwinning

— Karen Marie ?? (@tekarceben) November 4, 2020

Georgia had numerous problems on election night. A pipe burst early Tuesday morning at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena above the processing room for all absentee ballots in Fulton County, delaying counting there, said county spokeswoman Regina Waller. No ballots were damaged, according to Waller.

A suspected problem with voting tabulation software has caused delays in the counting of as many as 80,000 mail-in ballots in Gwinnett County, which is east of Atlanta, according to a county spokesman. Officials believe the software erroneously identified flaws in the way voters filled out the ballots.

There was a backlog in counting and the state sent workers home rather than finish counting overnight. Counting was to resume Wednesday morning.

Pausing vote counting is suspicious. Very suspicious.

Pull an all-nighter. Get it together.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) November 4, 2020

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who had suggested in the weeks before the election that counting could take until Friday, predicted to reporters Tuesday evening that the state could “potentially see a full result of every tabulation out of Michigan in the next 24 hours.” Counting resumed in that state on Wednesday.

In Nevada, the counting of mail-in votes in populous Clark County stopped overnight and was slated to resume at 11 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to the county’s registrar of voters but it is not clear if counting will be done on Wednesday or Thursday in that state. 70% of voters in Nevada reside in Las Vegas in Clark County. It has gone heavily Democratic in the last few years but many in the state are very upset with the shutdown of gaming and other businesses. The race is very tight in Nevada.

How does Florida, having the 3rd largest population in our country, get their votes counted in a few hours while these other states act like they have no clue what they are doing?

— ?? T in AZ ?? (@DesertTinAZ) November 4, 2020

A number of states had technical issues that caused delays in counting ballots as well. Wisconsin and South Carolina both had technical issues during voting. There was also an Internet outage in central Florida that caused delays.

Voting went fairly smoothly for the most part and violence did not seem to be an issue. Wednesday should clarify the ballot count in the election.