Why US election results are taking so long – With insights from Wall Street Journal

It’s currently a waiting game for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden as election officials in key states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia continue to tally the votes. Key states’ results were still too close to call Thursday. Here’s why and what to expect, with insights from the Wall Street Journal. 

Why Are Election Results Taking So Long? State-by-State Look at Electoral Votes

By WSJ Staff

Guide to key states yet to be called by Associated Press in 2020 presidential election

Key states’ results were still too close to call Thursday—here’s why and what to expect.

Election officials in pivotal states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia have long said it will take additional time to tally votes this election as a result of the pandemic-driven surge of mailed ballots. That is playing out now, with lawyers potentially delaying the count further with lawsuits over the handling of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania already being heard in courts.

President Trump’s victories in Texas, Florida and Ohio ran up against Joe Biden’s wins in Wisconsin and Michigan on the path to 270 electoral votes. Once the Democrat picked up Wisconsin, many of his pathways ran through Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Mr. Trump needs to win Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina to be re-elected.

In Wisconsin, the Associated Press has called the state for Mr. Biden, but that margin of victory appears narrow enough to allow Mr. Trump to request a recount. The Trump campaign said Wednesday it would petition for a recount under a state law governing close races.

The campaign mounted a multipronged attack in Pennsylvania that could land in the U.S. Supreme Court, sought to halt Michigan’s tallying of votes and asked a Georgia court to ensure that late-arriving mail-in ballots aren’t counted. On Michigan, the campaign said it “has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process.”

Here are the key states yet to be called by the AP.

Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes)

Counting in Pennsylvania is expected to take until Friday, with about 1 million known mail-in ballots outstanding in the Keystone state as of Wednesday evening.

Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden, but the remaining ballots are expected to overwhelmingly favor the Democrat and enough to likely overtake Mr. Trump. In Philadelphia alone, just more than half of the more than 350,000 mail-in votes received had been counted as of Wednesday evening.

The race in Pennsylvania has tightened as results have come in. According to the Associated Press, with 89% of votes counted, Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden by 2.6 percentage points, or about 164,000 votes.

The Trump campaign Wednesday filed three legal challenges to Pennsylvania voting procedures, one of which asked the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to intervene in a pending appeal.

Georgia (16 EV)

As results continue to come in from Georgia, the race tightens. According to the Associated Press, with 98% of votes counted, Mr. Trump has a lead of 0.5 point—or more than 22,000 votes—over Mr. Biden. The president is now below the 50% mark in the state.

Georgia’s secretary of state said that as of 10:15 p.m., there were about 90,735 ballots left to be counted in the state, including from counties that typically lean Democratic.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said counting the state’s ballots will most likely continue Thursday morning. The Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order Georgia election officials to follow the law on storing and counting absentee ballots, the AP reported Wednesday night.

North Carolina (15 EV)

North Carolina has a number of races that are too close to call, including for president and Senate, and the tally is unlikely to change significantly until Nov. 13, according to state election officials.

Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said Wednesday there were roughly 117,000 voters who requested an absentee ballot but haven’t voted. That number doesn’t reflect voters who asked for an absentee ballot but chose to cast an in-person ballot on Tuesday. Absentee ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 12 to be counted.

It isn’t clear that there are enough uncounted votes to change the trajectory of top races. Mr. Trump has a lead of about 76,700 votes out of 5.5 million votes cast, according to unofficial results from the state board of elections.

Nevada (Six EV)

No new election results will be reported in Nevada until Thursday morning, officials said late Wednesday.

The Nevada secretary of state’s office had initially said there would be no results statewide until Thursday. It then changed course and said there would hopefully be an update Wednesday afternoon before ultimately returning to the original plan.

Election officials in Nevada’s Clark and Washoe counties, the state’s two largest, said this afternoon neither county would have new election results to report until Thursday morning.

Current results show Mr. Biden holding a razor-thin lead of 7,647 votes over Mr. Trump, a margin of less than 1% of the vote.

There is no threshold required to request a recount in Nevada. No recount requests are expected until the Nevada secretary of state finishes counting mail ballots received on Election Day and those that arrive over the next week, in addition to provisional ballots.

The Nevada Supreme Court rejected a last-minute GOP request to alter how Las Vegas-area election officials were handling mail-in ballots but agreed to hear the party’s legal challenge in the coming weeks.

Corrections & Amplifications

The Trump campaign’s lawsuit in Georgia is asking a judge to order Georgia election officials to follow the law on storing and counting absentee ballots. An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that it aimed to have Georgia pause the vote count. (Corrected on Nov. 4.)

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