Biden vows to fight any Trump effort to take count to supreme court

Democratic candidate says it ‘ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted’

Joe Biden, briefly appearing in front of supporters in Delaware, urged patience, saying the election ‘ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted’.  Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
Joe Biden, briefly appearing in front of supporters in Delaware, urged patience, saying the election ‘ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted’. Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s campaign said it will fight any efforts by US president Donald Trump to go to the supreme court.

It comes after Mr Trump called the election results “a major fraud” and vowed to take the process to the supreme court.

Mr Trump cried foul over the election results during an appearance before supporters at the White House early on Wednesday morning and made premature claims of victory in several key states.

Mr Biden’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon called Mr Trump’s statement “outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect”.

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Ms O’Malley Dillon said the Biden campaign has “legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort”, and pledged: “They will prevail.”

But there is no evidence of foul play in the cliffhanger and it is unclear exactly what legal action Mr Trump might try to pursue.

The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the presidential race. There are still hundreds of thousands of votes left to be counted, and the outcome hinges on a handful of uncalled battleground states.

Several states allow postal votes to be accepted after polling day, as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday. That includes Pennsylvania, where ballots postmarked by November 3rd can be accepted if they arrive up to three days after the election.

Mr Trump suggested those ballots should not be counted. But Mr Biden, briefly appearing in front of supporters in Delaware, urged patience, saying the election “ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted”.

By early on Wednesday, neither candidate had the 270 electoral college votes needed to win.

Mr Biden, briefly appearing in front of supporters in Delaware, urged patience, saying the election “ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted”.

“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won this election,” Mr Biden said. “That’s the decision of the American people.”

Millions of voters braved their worries about coronavirus — and some long queues — to turn out in person, joining 102 million fellow Americans who voted days or weeks earlier, a record number that represented 73 per cent of the total vote in the 2016 presidential election. -AP