By: Noah Rubel
Nov. 3, 2020, was the official election day for the United States to decide if incumbent Donald J. Trump would win re-election, or if Democratic nominee Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris would win the Whitehouse. As of Nov. 7, various media sites have declared Biden president-elect, despite the numerous lawsuits pressed by the Trump campaign and various swing states recounting votes.
President Trump and his re-election campaign have filed numerous lawsuits across the country due to multiple voter fraud allegations. This all stemmed from election night. For most of the night President Trump was leading multiple battleground states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and holding a close race in Minnesota. Then, about 4 a.m., most of the leads seemingly vanished. In the wake of this, multiple allegations of voter fraud flooded the country. What ensued was something that has not been seen since the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore regarding recounts in Florida to determine the next president.
From Nov. 4 to Nov. 6, states such as Wisconsin and Michigan were called in favor of Biden. Nevada and Pennsylvania were still too close to call despite Trump’s almost ten-point lead in Pennsylvania.
Throughout the rest of the week, the lawsuits from the Trump campaign were filed due to baseless allegations of perceived voter fraud, the counting of votes that arrived after polls closing in various states and statistical errors that occurred in the digital vote-counting process with almost 30 states that recounted 6,000 votes to Biden in each occurrence.
On Nov. 7, most media sites declared Biden president-elect after he seemingly flipped an 8-point lead in Pennsylvania with only 15 percent of the vote left to be counted. Then shortly thereafter, Biden was also declared the winner in Nevada despite only a one-point lead with 86 percent of the votes counted in the state.
As of Nov. 7, Biden has been declared the victor unofficially by most of the media. But, the race is still far from over. All of the lawsuits put forward by the Trump campaign will have to be addressed as well as all of the states that have started recounts, such as Georgia.
This is not the first time a declared victor has actually been nulled by recounts. The 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush presented issues, and early on in the election, Democratic nominee Gore was announced president-elect before the Florida recount took place. Nearly a month later, after all of the lawsuits and Florida’s recount, Bush was declared the true winner of the Presidency by the Supreme Court.
Fast forward 20 years and the nation finds itself in a similar situation, only more states are conducting recounts and many more lawsuits have been filed. As of Nov. 7, Biden has been unofficially declared the 46th President, but the U.S. may not know the official victor for some time.