Networks call Georgia for Biden as security officials say vote was ‘secure’

Former White House adviser warns 'democracy isn’t guaranteed’

The former Obama Administration adviser for domestic policy, has delivered a warning over Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election to Joe Biden, who has won. 

Speaking to MSNBC, Melody Barnes said that “democracy isn’t guaranteed" and that "right now, that is at risk.”

She added that the “basic fundamentals” of America’s institutions were being used as Mr Trump’s “play thing” and for his own self-purpose, as he delayed accepting a presidential transition. 

Biden with comfortable vote margin over Trump

Here’s Chris Lu, the former cabinet secretary to Barack Obama, with a neat comparison of Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s vote margins between 2016 and 2020.

Recounts typically result in only minor changes to results, and so Mr Biden, who was declared president-elect on Saturday, would unlikely lose any of these battleground states following a recount or legal challenges, as Mr Trump has tried to pursue. 

Donald Trump and his allies have falsely claimed that last weeks election was “fraud”, with so called “illegal” ballots cast.

Now, as his campaign starts to file lawsuits blocking the certification of results in battleground states he lost to Joe Biden, election officials across the United States have pushed back, and said there “was no fraud” to be found.

Minnesota’s secretary of state, Steve Simon, told the New York Times that he doesn’t “know of a single case where someone argued that a vote counted when it shouldn’t have or didn’t count when it should.”

He was among a number of officials the paper contacted with the president’s claims. 

Republicans and the president, Donald Trump, claimed that the 2020 election was riddled with voter "fraud", and so he would not concede the race. 

But there was always one problem - because those claims had no evidence to support them, even as lawsuits were filed to stop counting and the verification of results in a number of battleground states in the past week.

Fortunately, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, has offered up to $1m as a reward to anyone who can prove with evidence that election fraud took place.  

 The money, Mr Patrick said, would come from his own campaign funds.

Stuti Mishra reports:

Economists say the biggest thing the president-elect can do to help the US economy is to get control of the coronavirus epidemic in America. 

And that’s not the only issue at stake, with the current economic slump seeing levels of economic activity around 3.5 per cent below its peak at the end of last year, and millions unemployed.

Ben Chu has the report: 

Here’s what the two contenders in the 2020 presidential election are up to, today:

• Joe Biden will meet with advisers on his transition team, as he prepares to take office on 20 January. As well as deciding on government appointments, his team will begin to work on tackling issues including climate change and the coronavirus.
• Donald Trump, meanwhile, will place a memorial wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery to mark Veterans Day. It will be his first public appearance in five days, as he continues to refuse to concede the election.

I’m sure the president can look forward to a swift response from the lawyers for both parties over this tweet, claiming the network and newspaper intentionally misled Wisconsin voters, once more without providing any evidence whatsoever.

He followed that by attempting to deny postal worker Richard Hopkins’ retraction of his made up ballot fraud story.

The Washington Times version he supplies, “sticks with the truth, his original story,” says the president incapable of shame.

The Biden campaign’s deputy manager, Rufus Gifford,  reminds Donald Trump the election ‘is over’.

More than 1 million cases of the coronavirus have been discovered in Texas since the onset of the outbreak, which has infected more than 10.2 million Americans, making it the first US state to surpass the million mark. 

And, with more than 19,000 Covid-19-related deaths, the Lone Star state would be ranked as the 10th highest for fatalities if it were its own country, according to Johns Hopkins University. 

Health officials in Texas reported an additional 10,865 cases on Tuesday, setting a new daily case record in the state, just one week after voters supported Donald Trump in the presidential election against Joe Biden, despite publicly downplaying the severity of the crisis.

California is also approaching 1 million cases, with more than 990,000 reported cases as of Wednesday.

While in South Dakota, a Republican stronghold, the number of patients hospitalised with the virus has risen by 51 per cent since election day, with 1 out of every 54 people in South Dakota currently considered an active coronavirus case, according to Bloomberg. 

More than a week after election day in Alaska, the state has now been called for Donald Trump by most media outlets, with the president lead over Joe Biden at roughly 46,000 votes, as anticipated. 

Mr Trump was declared the projected winner of the state on Wednesday, with 15 per cent of ballots still to be counted, the Associated Press reports. 

Of course, three electoral college vote will not change the outcome of the presidential contest, which Mr Biden leads by 73 electoral college votes.