Judge Allows Pennsylvania Voting-Machine Review: Election Update
Trump’s Tweets on Election Keep Getting Flagged: Election Update
(Bloomberg) -- A Pennsylvania county won an emergency petition to open a voting machine to check for remaining ballots. The top elections official in Georgia said the election was run well. Only four Republican senators have acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump.
Other Developments:
Judge Allows Voting Machine Inspection in Pennsylvania
The elections board of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on Monday won an emergency petition to open a voting machine to check for any remaining ballots or materials needed to complete the vote count.
Judge Richard Haaz of the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas granted the Montgomery County Board of Elections’s request, filed Friday, to open the machine “to check for any remaining ballots or other necessary Election Day materials solely for the purposes of appropriately tabulating the electors’ votes.”
The machine, the order said, must be opened in the presence of one Republican and one Democrat “from those approved to conduct the tabulation of the election by the board.”
Pennsylvania was called for Biden, who is about 45,000 votes ahead of Trump in the state, though ballots from last week’s election are still being counted. Trump has refused to concede and plans to challenge the results in several states, including Pennsylvania, making unfounded claims of voting irregularities.
The Montgomery County petition, however, appears to be an isolated case, unrelated to any of the broader litigation being considered by the the Trump campaign. -- Christopher Yasiejko
Georgia’s GOP Secretary of State Says Election Was Well-Run (5:55 p.m.)
The top elections official in Georgia rebuffed calls to resign amid baseless claims that the election outcome was affected by fraud.
In a statement, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the election administration was “a resounding success.”
“Was there illegal voting? I am sure there was. And my office is investigating all of it,” he said. “Does it rise to the numbers or margin necessary to change the outcome to where President Trump is given Georgia’s electoral votes? That is unlikely.”
The statement came after Georgia’s two Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, called on Raffensperger to resign after attacking his running of the election, without providing any evidence or specific complaints.
“The Secretary of State has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections,” wrote the two senators, who face runoff races on Jan. 5, after failing to clear the threshold of more than 50% in the election. “He has failed the people of Georgia, and he should step down immediately.”
The office of Georgia’s governor, who is also a Republican, weighed in with a statement on Twitter calling on the secretary of state to “take a serious look at any and all voting irregularity allegations.”
The outcome of the runoffs is likely to determine which party controls the Senate majority next year. Trump has also attacked the results in Georgia, claiming without evidence that he won the state. -- Steven T. Dennis and Billy House
Only Four GOP Senators Have Acknowledged Biden’s Win (3:26 p.m.)
Senator Susan Collins on Monday became the fourth Republican senator to acknowledge Biden’s win.
As Trump continues to put forward baseless claims of voter fraud, the Maine senator, who was just re-elected after trailing her Democratic opponent in the polls, put out a statement congratulating Biden on “his apparent victory.”
“I understand that the President and others have questions about the results in certain states,” she said. “There is a process in place to challenge those results and, consistent with that process, the President should be afforded the opportunity to do so.”
On Sunday, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse offered a less equivocal statement, telling the Omaha World-Herald that he and his wife “congratulate the next president, Joe Biden, and the next vice president, Kamala Harris.”
Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have also offered congratulatory words.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Urges ‘Smooth Transition’ (2:41 p.m.)
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged a “smooth transition” to the Biden administration and suggested Trump should stop trying to overturn the election results.
“The time for campaigning has come to an end, and now we’ve entered the time for governing,” the group’s chief policy officer, Neil Bradley, told reporters on Monday.
Bradley said that the group, which calls itself the “world’s largest business organization,” believes Congress and the White House can pass a fourth round of relief for the coronavirus during the lame-duck congressional period, and that an infrastructure bill including roads and bridges as well as broadband should then be Biden’s “number-one priority.”
Bradley said the chamber would also be “actively engaged” in the effort to re-elect Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who in January will face run-offs in Georgia that could swing control of the Senate to Democrats.
The chamber has long been allied with conservatives, but clashed with the Trump administration over its approach to trade and immigration. --Ben Brody
Biden’s Lead in Pennsylvania Now Bigger Than Trump’s in 2016 (1:20 p.m.)
Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania is now slightly larger than Trump’s was in 2016, when he carried the state.
As of Monday morning, Biden had a 45,649 vote margin in his childhood home state, surpassing Trump’s 44,292 margin over Hillary Clinton by more than 1,000 votes.
Ballot-counting continued over the weekend in Nevada, which has been called for Biden. He is now ahead 36,186 votes.
The results are less clear in three other battleground states -- Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona. In Georgia, Biden is up by 10,620 votes. And in Arizona, which the Associated Press and Fox News called for Biden but others have not, Biden’s lead shrank as more ballots were counted. The president-elect nevertheless finished the weekend ahead by 16,985 votes. In North Carolina, with 98% of the vote counted, Trump is ahead by 75,421 votes.
Trump has pushed for recounts in close states like Wisconsin and Georgia, but an analysis by the nonpartisan group FairVote found that only three statewide recounts over the last 20 years have changed the outcome of an election, and all involved a margin of victory of less than .05 percent, much smaller than Biden’s current leads.
Giuliani’s Press Conference Keeps Making News (11:42 a.m.)
The press conference that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani held in Philadelphia on Saturday, just as the Associated Press and networks were declaring Biden the election winner, has already drawn the wrong kind of attention for its unusual location.
But the event at Four Seasons Total Landscaping got more negative press Monday, as one of the people Guiliani cited as a witness to voting irregularities turned out to be a sex offender who has repeatedly run for office unsuccessfully in New Jersey, according to Politico.
Daryl Brooks spoke at the Saturday press conference, alleging he was a Republican poll watcher in Philadelphia who was prevented from doing his job effectively.
A perennial candidate and local activist in Trenton, Brooks spent time in prison after exposing himself to two young girls in 1998, according to the Times of Trenton.
Trump’s Tweets Keep Getting Flagged Under New Policy (10:49 a.m.)
Trump’s win in 2016 was powered in part by his effective use of Twitter as a megaphone. That tool has proven less effective in recent days.
Under a new policy on inaccurate posts about election results, the social media giant has flagged a number of Trump tweets that baselessly allege voting fraud or claim he won the election.
Since the Associated Press and TV networks called the race on Saturday, Trump has had seven tweets flagged with the label “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
Four tweets making specific and baseless claims about fraud in Pennsylvania were flagged as “disputed” and potentially “misleading,” which kept them hidden from most casual users. And three tweets received a softer “Learn how voting by mail is safe and secure” corrective.
One tweet, in which he claimed “I won this election, by a lot!” was flagged with “Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted.”
The Twitter flags should also double as a warning for Trump, who will lose the “public interest” exemption that allows the tweets to remain on the site after Biden’s inauguration in late January. At that point, bans inciting violence or making false claims about the coronavirus or voting could be taken down or his account suspended, as for any other user.
Coming Up:
The deadline for certifying election results in Georgia and Michigan is Nov. 17. A request for recount must be made within two business days in Georgia and 48 hours in Michigan.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.