Joe Biden is projected to win Georgia and Donald Trump gets North Carolina as TV networks call the final states - 10 days after counting began
Television networks and the Associated Press projected the final results of the election Friday with Joe Biden the predicted winner in Georgia and Donald Trump in North Carolina.
The results put Biden on 306 electoral college votes and Donald Trump on 232 - precisely the same numbers, although not from the same states, as the president's victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, which he called a 'massive landslide.'
The call does not necessarily mean Biden is on a glide path to the White House, with Trump still refusing to concede and still threatening litigation.
But it shows the monumental uphill struggle Trump would have to overturn the popular will in multiple states - at least three and as many as six.
It came on a day when his legal strategy to challenge the results turned to tatters: his lawyers abandoned their sole case in Arizona, got thrown out of court in Michigan by a judge who blasted their affidavits as inaccurate, and federal appeals judges booted a Republican case in Philadelphia to try to invalidate late ballots which Trump would have benefited from.
The calls end the longest-drawn out post-election wait for projected results in history.
Arizona had been called late Thursday night, confirming a contentious projection made early on the Wednesday morning after the election by Fox News and Associated Press, to the fury of Trump and his entourage. His son-in-law Jared Kushner even tried phoning Rupert Murdoch, Fox's owner, to have it with drawn but was rebuffed.
Additionally Republican senator Martha McSally finally conceded to Democratic candidate Mark Kelly in the Arizona senate race, meaning she enters history as having been appointed twice to vacant senate seats there and twice lost her attempts to keep them.
Her race had been called on Wednesday but she hung on for more than a week before bowing to reality.
Despite Biden being declared winner of the election on Saturday, Trump has refused to concede and continues to make baseless claims of election fraud.
President Donald Trump has refused to concede the election to President-elect Joe Biden , alleging widespread voter fraud. In Arizona officials found 'no discrepancies' when they audited ballots in more than half the counties, including the largest, Maricopa
Voters in Phoenix, Arizona - which is in Maricopa County - wait to cast their ballots on Election Day, November 3
On top of that, Arizona turning into a lost cause legally suggests the direction of travel for the rest of Trump's litigation.
An official audit of more than half of Arizona's counties, representing 86% of the population, found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in another blow to President Donald Trump's campaign's legal and rhetorical push.
Eight of 15 Arizona counties, including Maricopa - the state's most populated - turned in hand count results and found 'no discrepancies.'
And on Friday his lawyers abandoned a case which tried to push a conspiracy theory that voting machines failed to count Trump votes correctly, the day after a judge called the evidence lies and spam.
On Thursday, an Arizona judge blocked 'evidence' from being presented by a Trump campaign lawyer, which were affadavits filled out using online forms - and were filled with lies and 'spam,' according to Law & Crime.
'This is concerning,' said Judge Daniel Kiley of Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located. 'How is this a reliable process of gathering evidence?'
Trump campaign lawyer Kory Langhofer argued that the online forms used CAPTCHA technology - where users have to identify letters, number or sometimes photos, to prove they're not bots.
Langhofer said that Trump campaign lawyers then visited witnesses' homes - and excluded submissions that included lies.
If the Trump team couldn't prove an individual was lying they included it in the pile of 'evidence.'
Kiley, according to Law & Crime, was not convinced.
'That just shows you cannot disprove what's asserted,' he said.
Arizona was called on Election Day by The Associated Press and Fox News Channel, but no major networks have made the call since.
Meanwhile in Georgia election officials in its 159 counties started counting ballots Friday morning for a hand tally of the presidential race that stems from an audit required by state law.
The law requires that one race be audited by hand to check that the machines counted the ballots accurately, not because of any suspected problems with the results. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger chose to audit the presidential race and said the tight margin -Biden leads - Trump by 14,000 votes - meant a full hand count was necessary.
In Cobb County, in suburban Atlanta, several dozen two-person audit teams wearing face masks as a precaution against coronavirus sat at tables in a large room at a county event center in Marietta as they began counting absentee ballots. At each table, one auditor picked up a ballot read the candidate's name aloud and then passed it to the other auditor, who also said the name aloud before placing the ballot in a clearly marked tray corresponding to the candidate's name.
As they worked, the room was quiet aside from the shuffling of papers and auditors saying, 'Trump' or 'Biden.'
A similar scene occurred in counties across the state as the count began.
Even as the count began, Raffensperger was self-quarantining as a precaution after his wife tested positive on Thursday for the coronavirus. The secretary of state's office has instructed county election officials to complete the audit by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. The deadline for the state to certify the results is Friday Nov. 20.
Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs told The Associated Press that Raffensperger tested negative for the virus and said the secretary's quarantine will not affect the audit.
County election staffers will work with the paper ballots in batches, dividing them into piles for each candidate. Then they will count each pile by hand, Fuchs said.
The audit is a new requirement that was included in a 2019 law that also provided guidelines that the state used to purchase a new election system from Dominion Voting Systems for more than $100 million.
The final numbers in the audit count will almost certainly be slightly different from the numbers previously reported by the counties but the overall outcome should remain the same, said Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state's new voting system for the secretary of state's office.
The results will not be released piecemeal as the counties finish counting but instead will be announced once the full tally is complete, he said, adding that the results of the new count from the audit is what will be certified.
There is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, but state law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. Biden´s lead stood at 0.28 percentage points as of Thursday afternoon.
Once the results from the audit are certified, the losing campaign can request that recount, which will be done using scanners that read and tally the votes, Raffensperger said.
STATE-BY-STATE: WHERE TRUMP IS SUING AND HOW IT'S GOING
PENNSYLVANIA
BIDEN MAJORITY TRUMP NEEDS TO OVERTURN: 47,620
On Monday the Trump campaign filed their big shot at overturning all mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, claiming that Democratic and Republican counties did not administer them in the same way; instances of fraud; and that poll watchers could not see them being counted. On that basis, they say, the results should not be certified on November 23.
The case faces an uphill struggle - and on Thursday the largest law firm in. involved in it, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, quit.
The Supreme Court has already allowed mail-in ballots to be issued in Pennsylvania, and the claim of poll watchers not seeing them being counted had failed before when a Trump lawyer last Friday agreed that a 'non-zero number' of Republicans had observed the count in Philadelphia.
The new suit provided no actual evidence of fraud. It did include a claim by an Erie mailman that he had heard his supervisors talking about illegally backdating ballots; he was said to have recanted that claim when questioned by U.S. Postal Inspectors.
Trump's campaign last Wednesday filed a motion to intervene in a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging a decision from the state's highest court that allowed election officials to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday's Election Day that were delivered through Friday.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday night ordered county election boards in the state to separate mail-in ballots received after 8 p.m. EST on Election Day.
Pennsylvania election officials have said those ballots were already being separated.
The justices previously ruled there was not enough time to decide the merits of the case before Election Day but indicated they might revisit it afterwards.
Alito, joined by fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, said in a written opinion that there was a 'strong likelihood' the Pennsylvania court's decision violated the U.S. Constitution.
Pennsylvania's Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar has said late-arriving ballots are a tiny proportion of the overall vote in the state.
Rudy Giuliani unveiled a 'witness' to his claims - a Republican poll watcher - on Saturday but the man, Daryl Brooks, has not been included in any legal papers. He was previously convicted of exposing himself to underage girls.
ARIZONA
BIDEN MAJORITY TRUMP NEEDS TO OVERTURN: 12,813. RECOUNT IS LEGALLY IMPOSSIBLE
Trump's campaign said last Saturday it had sued in Arizona, alleging that the state's most populous county incorrectly rejected votes cast on Election Day by some voters.
The lawsuit, filed in state Superior Court in Maricopa County, said poll workers told some voters to press a button after a machine had detected an 'overvote.'
The campaign said that decision disregarded voters' choices in those races, and the lawsuit suggested those votes could prove 'determinative' in the outcome of the presidential race.
It is a modification of an earlier suit which was submitted and then withdrawn claiming that Trump voters were given sharpies to mark their ballots and claiming this made them more prone to error. The 'sharpie-gate' claims have no basis in fact, Arizona's secretary of state says.
On Thursday 12, a judge savaged the affidavits produced to back the case as 'spam' and a Trump lawyer said they were not alleging fraud in any form.
NEVADA
BIDEN MAJORITY TRUMP NEEDS TO OVERTURN: 36,726
A voter, a member of the media and two candidate campaigns sued Nevada's secretary of state and other officials to prevent the use of a signature-verification system in populous Clark County and to provide public access to vote counting.
A federal judge rejected the request on Friday, saying there was no evidence the county was doing anything unlawful.
No new suits have been lodged so far.
Trump campaign officials have also claimed evidence that non-residents have voted but have not sued.
GEORGIA
BIDEN MAJORITY TRUMP NEEDS TO OVERTURN: 14,111
The Trump campaign on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in state court in Chatham County that alleged late-arriving ballots were improperly mingled with valid ballots, and asked a judge to order late-arriving ballots be separated and not be counted.
The case was dismissed on Thursday. No new suits have been filed. The state is going to a recount.
The two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, called for the GOP Secretary of State to quit claiming there were election irregularities Monday. They offered no evidence and he scoffed: 'That's not going to happen.'
MICHIGAN
BIDEN MAJORITY TRUMP NEEDS TO OVERTURN: 148,645
On Monday 9 Trump filed a federal case alleging fraud and then later a separate demand that the votes are not certified on November 23.
In the first case, one witness - possibly misgendered by the Trump lawyers - claimed that they had been told by another person that mysterious ballots arrived late on vehicles with out of state plates and all were for Biden; that they had seen voters coached to vote for Biden; and that they were told to process ballots without any checks.
It also included poll watchers and 'challengers' who said they could not get close enough to see what was happening.
A federal judge has yet to issue any response on when and how it will be looked into. The Trump campaign also filed the same case again to the wrong federal court on Thursday 12 for no apparent reason.
Trump's campaign last Wednesday filed a lawsuit in Michigan to halt the vote count in the state. The lawsuit alleged that campaign poll watchers were denied 'meaningful access' to counting of ballots, plus access to surveillance video footage of ballot drop boxes.
On Thursday 6, Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens dismissed the case, saying there was no legal basis or evidence to halt the vote and grant requests.
U.S. POSTAL SERVICE
The U.S. Postal Service said about 1,700 ballots had been identified in Pennsylvania at processing facilities during two sweeps on Thursday and were being delivered to election officials, according to a court filing early Friday.
The Postal Service said 1,076 ballots, had been found at its Philadelphia Processing and Distribution Center. About 300 were found at the Pittsburgh processing center, 266 at a Lehigh Valley facility and others at other Pennsylvania processing centers.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington is overseeing a lawsuit by Vote Forward, the NAACP, and Latino community advocates.
Sullivan on Thursday ordered twice-daily sweeps at Postal Service facilities serving states with extended ballot receipt deadlines.
The judge plans to hold a status conference on Monday.