US Election 2020 Live Updates: Over 9 million votes cast in swing state Florida; figure at 95% of 2016 turnout – World News , Firstpost

US Election 2020 Latest Updates: News reports say that 9,069,761 people have already voted in Florida, which is roughly 95 percent of the 9.6 million total votes in the 2016 election. Registered Democrats lead registered Republicans by about 115,000 votes. Nearly 2 million people with no party affiliation have also voted, CNN reported.

In what CNN termed ‘only a mildly confident view of his prospects’, President Donald Trump asserted that he will call in a win, only when there’s a win.

Joe Biden has started Election Day with a visit to church — and the grave of his late son, Beau. Biden and his wife, Jill, made an early morning stop at St. Joseph’s on the Brandywine in Wilmington, Delaware

At least 98.1 million people voted before Election Day, or just shy of 71 percent of the nearly 139 million ballots cast during the 2016 presidential election, according to data collected by The Associated Press. Given that a few states, including Texas, had already exceeded their total 2016 vote count, experts were predicting record turnout this year

President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign are signaling they will pursue an aggressive legal strategy to try to prevent Pennsylvania from counting mailed ballots that are received in the three days after the election. The matter could find its way to the Supreme Court, especially if those ballots could tip the outcome in the battleground state.

On Election day, President Donald Trump is planning to visit his campaign headquarters in Virginia on Tuesday, while Biden will travel to his birthplace of Scranton, the scrappy Pennsylvania town where Trump also visited on Monday

Polls opened at 6:00 am (4.30 pm IST) in the eastern states of New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut and Maine. But the first polling stations to open in the country were in two New Hampshire villages, Dixville Notch and Millsfield, starting at midnight

Election Day is finally here.

Or at least what we still call Election Day, since nearly 100 million Americans had already cast ballots by Tuesday.

That’s the result of an election system that has been reshaped by the worst pandemic in a century, prompting many voters to take advantage of advance voting rather than head to polling places in person at a time when coronavirus cases are rising.

Here’s what to watch as the final votes for President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are cast:

Results, Results…?

We may not know who won the presidential election on Tuesday night. And if so, it does not necessarily mean anything is broken, fraudulent, corrupted or wrong.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested a slower-than-typical result is a sign of trouble.

“I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election,” he said on Sunday. “I think it’s a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over.”

It’s unclear what the president thinks is a long period. But it’s standard practice to continue tabulating votes after Election Day. But as it turns out that not knowing final results on the voting day itself is not an exception but the norm. The reason is simple enough, that it is physically impossible to count millions of ballots overnight as votes are cast across 51 states both in person, and by mail.

What the headlines mean, when they say that results will be delayed this year is that there may not be enough information available early enough to call out the polls in favour of one candidate over the other.

Does this mean results will come out later than usual?

Yes.

The biggest factor that may slow things down this year is clear: Millions of Americans decided to vote by mail rather than risk contracting coronavirus at a polling place. And in general, those mail ballots take longer to count.

Election workers must remove the ballots from their envelopes, check for errors, sort them and flatten them — all before they can be run through scanners the moment polls close and be tabulated. In states with well-established vote-by-mail programs, this processing happens weeks before Election Day. The results are often released quickly.

But several states did not have this system in place before this year and laws on the books prohibited election officials from processing the ballots well in advance of Election Day. Without a head start, there’s virtually no way to process and count all the mail votes on Election Day, while also counting all the in-person votes.

There are three important battlegrounds with restrictions on when the mail vote can be processed — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In those states, Republican-controlled legislatures have resisted pleas from election officials to update the laws to allow for a speedier count. (The Michigan legislature did allow processing to begin 24 hours before Election Day in cities, but election officials say that’s not enough of a head start.) Instead, they will initially report in-person votes — expected to heavily favor Trump — and gradually update with the more Democratic-leaning mail ballots later.

But don’t news organisations call a winner before all the vote is counted?

Yes, there’s never been a presidential race in history in which all votes are counted on election night. It’s just not physically possible to instantly count that many ballots — possibly as many as 150 million on the night of Nov. 3.

Media organizations, including The Associated Press, declare winners in thousands of races on election night based on the results that are in, voter surveys and other political data.

But in a close race, more of the vote may need to be counted before The Associated Press can call a winner.

Is there any hope for knowing the winner on election night?

Sure. Not all battleground states are slow-counting states. So if several key states release their results promptly, one candidate may have a majority of the electoral vote — even without knowing who won in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Michigan.

That becomes more likely if the races in those states are not close.

It’s a scenario that puts a lot of eyes on Florida. The state allows its election offices to process mail ballots 22 days before the election. It’s also the biggest swing state. As long as the race isn’t too close — a big “if” in a place famous for tight races — there could be a close-to-complete count by midnight. And if Trump loses Florida, it’s is very difficult for him to reach the 270 electoral votes he needs to defeat former Vice President Joe Biden and return to the White House.

Two other Southern battlegrounds — North Carolina and Georgia — also can begin processing mail ballots early. They are both considered critical states for Trump. However, unlike Florida, neither state has a record of handling a large number of mail ballots. It’s unclear how quickly they will count those votes.

Finally, two Midwestern states — Iowa and Ohio — also allow for early processing of mail ballots. Trump won both states handily in 2016, but Democrats believe Biden is competitive there. Results in those two states on election night could give hints about what lies ahead in the critical Rust Belt states that take longer to count.

With inputs from AP and AFP