A certified final result of the election from all states should not be available until December 8th, but on the basis of forecasts and predictions the major US media declared Joe Biden the election winner on November 7th.
The Democratic candidate now has 290 votes from the electorate in Electoral College. 270 votes are sufficient for the majority in the electoral assembly that is to determine the president on December 14th. The result of the vote will be announced in Congress on January 6th – only then will there be absolute legal certainty.
(Angela Weiss / AFP)How does the electoral system work in the USA?
The road to the White House is complicated, which is due to the peculiarities of the American electoral system. Which states are particularly important? Who can vote? An overview.
As expected, incumbent Donald Trump was finally able to win the election in Alska – and with it to win three electors, but according to the current status (13.11.) this only adds up to a total of 217 electoral votes.
However, Trump continues to refuse to admit defeat and speaks – so far without any evidence – of election fraud. According to his spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany, he has not yet given up hope of remaining in the White House. “Of course he thinks he still has a chance,” she told Fox News. Trump’s team has filed lawsuits against the vote count in several states.
In which states is the election still open?
In almost no US state, the counting of the votes is complete, but in most of the two candidates one of the two candidates already has such a large lead that he is considered the election winner.
After the close decision in Arizona and the confirmation of Biden’s victory in Georgia by means of a recount, the allocation of voters’ votes is only open in North Carolina. A victory for Trump is looming in the state on the east coast. The US President leads with around 74,900 votes and thus holds a share of 50.0 percent. Biden comes to 48.7 percent. However, postal votes postmarked November 3rd can still be received by November 12th – and must be taken into account by this deadline. It is unlikely that Biden will catch up in North Carolina.
(picture alliance / Jürgen Schwenkenbecher)What role does the postal vote play in the presidential election
The US presidential election will take place on November 3rd. Because of the corona pandemic, many people vote by postal vote. This could have a significant impact on the outcome of the election. An overview.
That would give Trump 15 more electoral votes. These could only be decisive, however, if his team succeeded in challenging the election results in other states.
In which states is Trump suing?
Trump had already sown distrust in the election process during the election campaign by repeatedly raising unproven allegations of manipulation – especially with regard to postal votes. Again and again the President claimed that an election victory could only be achieved through electoral fraud. A narrative that Trump resorted to when it became apparent in several “swing states” that his lead on election night was shrinking with the counting of the postal votes.
(imago images / ZUMA Wire / Pavlov Gonchar)The fight for the swing states
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A scenario that was expected because Republican voters traditionally tend to vote personally at the ballot box, while Democratic supporters tend to vote by postal vote. A trend that was intensified by the corona pandemic.
In three states of the so-called “Rust Belt”, where Trump had won the election against Hillary Clinton four years ago, the tide finally turned: Biden was declared the winner in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Trump publicly doubts this and repeatedly speaks of massive electoral fraud that is being used to try to steal his victory. Neither he nor his lawyers have so far provided evidence.
(Consolidated News Photos)Donald Trump reiterates his allegations of electoral fraud
US President Donald Trump sees himself as the winner, numerous votes against him are illegal. But he does not provide any evidence for this. High-ranking Republicans are distancing themselves from the president, saying that his actions are dangerous.
Donald Trump’s team filed lawsuits in all three states: in Michigan to stop the count, in Georgia to exclude ballots that were allegedly late arriving from the count, and in Pennsylvania to overturn the legal rule that all absentee votes were cast, received by November 6th must be counted. In Nevada, too, Trump’s lawyers tried to take legal action against the count. All lawsuits were dismissed by the competent courts – plus a second lawsuit against the outcome in Pennsylvania.
Regardless, Trump’s campaign team has announced further legal action. In Georgia, Republicans named the names of four deceased who had been voted for, according to records. More examples would follow, it said. In Michigan, Trump’s attorneys filed another lawsuit against alleged obstruction of Republican observers from the vote count.
What’s wrong with Trump’s fraud allegations?
There is no evidence of widespread election fraud. Several US authorities have now described the November 3rd election as the safest vote in American history. A statement issued by representatives from the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency and state election officers’ associations said: “There is no evidence that any voting system has deleted or changed votes – or compromised in any way. “
Electoral officials from both parties had previously publicly stated that the vote had gone well. In Philadelphia, where, according to Trump and his supporters, there should have been particularly massive election manipulation, the head of the responsible authorities, Al Schmidt, himself a Republican, emphasized that this was not the reality. In the largest city in the US state of Pennsylvania, the election results are to be officially confirmed by November 23.
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International election observers also emphasized that they had not discovered any serious irregularities. Representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reprimanded US President Trump for damaging the public’s trust in democratic institutions through unfounded allegations of systematic deficiencies.
The allegations made by Trump’s campaign troops relate to mistakes that are common in elections: Among other things, problems with signatures, postmarks on election letters and possibly a small number of incorrectly counted or lost ballot papers. Biden leads so clearly in the electoral states that corresponding corrections will no longer change the overall result.
(imago/Chris Kleponis)US constitutional lawyer: Trump’s chances are “extremely slim”
Donald Trump will not be able to legally avert his election defeat, believes constitutional lawyer Gerhard Casper. He considers a decision by the Supreme Court to be very unlikely.
Trump’s attempts to overturn Biden’s election victory by legal means give experts little to no chance of success – at least at the state level. Nevertheless, the president could escalate the dispute all the way to the highest US court, the Supreme Court – the outcome is uncertain.
The election results for the Senate and House of Representatives
The congressional election was held on November 3, parallel to the presidential election. In the run-up, the Democrats had hoped to be able to take over the majority in the powerful US Senate. There they had 47 seats, the Republicans 53. In Arizona and Colorado, the Democrats gained one seat, but lost one seat in Alabama. After the previous mandate holders prevailed in a close race in North Carolina and Alaska, the Republicans are only one seat away from a renewed majority.
So far, the Democrats have had 48 of the 100 seats in the Senate. The future occupation of two seats to which the state of Georgia is entitled is still open. They will not be awarded until a runoff election on January 5th. Should Georgia Democratic candidates win both seats, there would be a 50-50 stalemate in the Senate. In this case, the US Constitution stipulates that the Vice President establishes a majority in Senate decisions with his vote – after Biden takes office, his party colleague Kamala Harris will hold the office of Vice President.
Should the Republicans defend their majority in the Senate, this would make it much more difficult for the newly elected president to govern. Its Democratic Party was able to keep its majority in the House of Representatives – although they fell far short of their expectations and even lost three seats. But the Senate can block bills by the President and the House of Representatives. In addition, nominations for government, judge and ambassador posts require the approval of the Senate.
“The next president will be blocked by at least one chamber in Congress,” said the political scientist Josef Braml on Deutschlandfunk. This leaves one of the central problems of US politics. The system of government is polarized, radicalized and no longer capable of acting.
(imago-images)Political scientist: “I still expect a blockade”
No matter who becomes the next president of the USA, he will not have much support, said Josef Braml in the Dlf. The next president will be blocked by one of the two chambers in Congress.
(Source: Wulf Wilde, Tobias Pastoors, Doris Simon, Thilo Kößler, Klaus Remme)
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