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

Did Melania just low-key concede the election? (SPOILER ALERT: NO)

“Joy to the World!” – that’s a direct quote, not editorial commentary.

This comes from the so-called “White House Info” website outlining the White House Christmas Tours 2020. It says:  

“Every December since 2017, First Lady Melania Trump filled the White House with holiday decorations: Christmas trees, wreaths, garland, colorful lights, gingerbread houses, and more. 2020 marks the final holiday season for the Trump White House.” 

Many online started to reach delirious levels of schadenfreude. But read the fine print at the very bottom of the page, and it’s not an official White House website.

“This website is not officially associated with the White House in any way”, it says.

So, not officially from Melania. But not necessarily wrong, either.

EXPLAINER: Is Georgia's upcoming ballot 'audit' a recount?

Georgia says it’s going to be tallying — by hand — nearly 5 million ballots that were cast in its very close presidential election on Nov. 3. But is it a recount? An “audit"? And why are they doing it?

It’s all a bit confusing, but election experts say what’s happening in Georgia is unlikely to change the outcome and are warning that discrepancies in the final vote count are likely. That doesn’t mean anything nefarious happened. Experts say some discrepancies are expected when so many votes are counted a second time using an entirely different method — hand versus machine.

While President Donald Trump has been making unsubstantiated claims of fraud as he challenges the election's outcome, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger has defended the work of election officials in the state and said the review was unlikely to change the outcome. Unofficial results show Democrat Joe Biden leading Trump by about 14,000 votes.

Read more:

No evidence of Pennsylvania voting fraud, says state’s top cop

Pennsylvania’s highest-ranking law enforcement official said Thursday that more than a week after Election Day he still has not seen any indication there was widespread voter fraud.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, elected to a second term last week, said lawyers for the Republican Party and President Donald Trump also haven’t produced any evidence of it in the swirl of litigation they’re pursuing.

“Certainly if there was some, we would be on it immediately or our law enforcement partners would be on it immediately,” Shapiro said. “I’ve seen a lot of tweets about it, I’ve seen a lot of public statements about it, but we’ve seen absolutely no evidence of it.”

He said people should not think that the litigation will reverse the voting results.

’The will of the people is going to be respected in the final certified vote total,” he said.

Shapiro also says lawmakers in the Republican-majority General Assembly lack legal authority to attempt to replace Democrat Joe Biden’s Electoral College voters, as some have speculated.

The attorney general said he knows of no efforts by the president or his allies to attempt to flip Biden’s 20 designated electors, a group of party stalwarts and elected Democrats. AP

Lindsey Graham donates $1 million to Republicans in Georgia while acknowledging Biden should receive briefings

Senator Lindsey Graham (R—SC) has announced his re-election campaign will donate $1 million of its leftover fundraising towards efforts in Georgie to keep GOP control of the senate.

With the state set to conduct two runoff races in early January, the Republican senator said on Fox News a “tsunami of liberal money” was flooding Georgia to help Democratic candidates like Jon Ossoff, vying for a shot to unseat Senator David Perdue (R—GA).

Senator Kelly Loeffler (R—GA) was also facing a widely-viewed race with Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock. The fate of both elections will ultimately determine whether Republicans maintain control of the senate during President-elect Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House — or if Democrats can have the votes to lead in congress, delivering him a unified government for his first-term in office.

Chris Riotta has more.

Biden win in Arizona ‘confirmed’ as analyst says there is now no way back for Trump

President-elect Joe Biden has finally been announced as the winner in Arizona by one of the last remaining analysts to call the state, days after the Associated Press, Fox News and several other networks projected his victory.

Mr Biden no longer needed to win Arizona’s 11 electoral votes, which take him to a total of 290, after he was declared the winner in the crucial swing state ofPennsylvania on Saturday.

But the result in Arizona was still being closely watched, after some analysts suggested the projection of a result in the state on election night itself was a little premature.

The victory in Arizona is a historic one for the Democrats, who last took the seat in 1996 during Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign. Before Mr Clinton, the last Democrat to win in Arizona was Harry Truman in 1948.

Stuti Mishra has more.

Top House Republican dismisses Pelosi’s claim of Biden mandate

The top House Republican is pushing back against Democratic claims that President-elect Joe Biden will have a mandate, saying voters handed the GOP one with more seats in the lower chamber.

"I heard the speaker call it a mandate. It was a mandate against socialism. It was a mandate against defunding the police,” Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters on Thursday.

Because Mr Biden has received 77m votes, more than any presidential candidate in US history, he and Democratic lawmakers say he has a clear mandate to push his agenda.

John T Bennett reports.

FACT CHECK: Trump tweets a tall tale of 'deleted' votes

Donald Trump earlier claimed on Twitter that an election technology firm, Dominion Voting Systems, “deleted” large numbers of his votes or “switched” them to count for Joe Biden. The tweet amplified a “report” built on claims that originated in anonymous comments on a pro-Trump blog.

According to Associated Press: There have been only a “small handful” of issues that were the result of human error involving voting technology, not the software itself, said Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election technology research and development nonprofit. The OSET Institute has helped monitor more than 1,000 reports of voting issues throughout the U.S. since Election Day.

Perez said he was not aware of any systemic issue related to problems with Dominion software that would affect the tabulation of results.

Read the full deep dive:

'Has it finished?' Brazil's Bolsonaro questions the US election

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a close ally of Republican President Donald Trump and one of the few prominent world leaders still not to have congratulated Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on his election win, asked on Thursday whether the vote in the U.S. was really over.

Talking to supporters outside his official residence, Bolsonaro was asked what he thought of the American election result.

“But has it finished, have the elections already finished?,” he asked the supporter, breaking into a smile before posing for selfies.

The Brazilian leader, who had vowed to be the first to congratulate Trump on his re-election, is approaching a week without passing on congratulations to Biden, who has been projected to win the majority of both the popular and electoral vote.

The Brazilian leader’s posture could herald a rocky start in relations with Biden, whose agenda with Brazil would likely include addressing Amazon deforestation and human rights.

On Tuesday, he also took a swipe at Biden referring to him as a “candidate” and taking issue with a comment Biden said during a U.S. presidential debate that Brazil should fight deforestation with foreign help or face unspecified “economic consequences.”

“We saw recently there a great candidate for head of state say that if I don’t put out the fire in the Amazon, he will put up commercial barriers against Brazil,” Bolsonaro said.

“And how can we deal with all that? Just diplomacy is not enough ... When saliva runs out, one has to have gunpowder, otherwise it doesn’t work.” - Reuters

Welcoming the prospects of US president-elect Joe Biden rejoining the Paris climate accord, French President Emmanuel Macron called it a chance to “make our planet great again”.

It’s a play on Trump’s infamous MAGA slogan that Mr Macron first coined in 2017. See below for the full story on his comments:

The US’s top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci has said the country is about to approve another coronavirus vaccine, following days after Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech announced their vaccine has proved 90 per cent effective.