Weekly student blog by James – Spotlight on the US Election
4 years of President Trump led us to this election. With many news channels projecting defeat, he still won’t concede. And it’s not just him. I have read about Republican candidates in Washington, Pennsylvania and Arizona who were reluctant to admit losing. A candidate in Washington is more than 550,000 votes behind with just under 68,000 ballots to count. In Pennsylvania, this candidate is losing by 9000+ votes with 95% of ballots counted. A female senator in Arizona would not give up after being behind by over 97,000 votes with 98% of papers checked. She did however, concede to her Democrat challenger after this article was published. Pennsylvania and Arizona are states that a majority gave their votes to the Republicans last time but in this election more people came out for the Democrats. Donald Trump’s legal suits have been dropped in both swing states!
Given Joe Biden is predicted to have received 5 million more votes than Donald Trump, I’m not sure the Electoral college will be something his lawyers will argue against. Instead, he is going to base claims of an “election fraud” on the mail ballots saying they are illegal and questioning why there were so many of them. Of course many people like me will think part of the reason for the high numbers of US residents voting by post will be down to an infectious virus!
It has been claimed that this election had the highest turnout for at least one hundred years, according to a piece in the Washington Post, another point the Donald Trump team need to answer before I believe they are right.
