News / 2020 ELECTIONS / Politics

US pre-Election Day vote surpasses two-thirds of all 2016 ballots cast

Sunday, 01 November 2020 6:24 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 01 November 2020 10:10 AM ]

Voters fill out their ballots at an early voting center at the Mount Vernon Governmental Center on October 31, 2020 in Alexandria, Virginia. (AFP photo)

More than 91.6 million Americans have voted early in the US presidential election, surpassing two-thirds of all ballots cast during the 2016 presidential election.

With just three days until Election Day, the high number of early voters reflects intense interest in the contest between Republican President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden despite the obstacles of the coronavirus pandemic.

A majority of US states are reporting record early voting turnout in the 2020 election, which represents about 43% of registered voters nationwide, according to a survey of election officials in all 50 states and Washington, DC, by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist.   

Texas and Hawaii reported turnout that has already exceeded the total vote from 2016, while ten other states, including major battlegrounds like Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada, have surpassed 80 percent of the turnout from the last election.

Meanwhile, Trump and Biden continued to campaign across the country on Saturday to try to sway the few remaining undecided voters.

This combination of pictures created on October 31, 2020 shows US President Donald Trump (panel L) and US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden (panel R) and during campaign events in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Delaware and Iowa respectively on October 30 and 31, 2020. (AFP photo)

Trump, who is trailing former vice president nationally, is spending this little time he has before Election Day criticizing public officials and medical professionals who are trying to stem the pandemic in spite of new spikes in recent days.

"I watched Joe Biden speak yesterday. All he talks about is COVID, COVID. He's got nothing else to say. COVID, COVID," Trump said on Saturday.

He held four rallies on Saturday in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. “If we win Pennsylvania, it’s over,” Trump told a large rally in Reading before moving to another big gathering in Butler.

“We’re going to be waiting,” Trump, who has spent months disparaging voting by mail, said in Bucks County. “Nov. 3 is going to come and go, and we’re not going to know. And you’re going to have bedlam in our country.”

Trump criticizes late ballot counting as Biden urges unity

President Trump says it would not be appropriate to take extra time to count the tens of millions of ballots cast by mail.

The incumbent has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud and has more recently said that only the results available on election night should count.

Biden, told his supporters at a rally in Flint, Michigan, “I don’t care how hard Donald Trump tries. There’s nothing – let me say that again – there’s nothing that he can do to stop the people of this nation from voting in overwhelming numbers and taking back this democracy.”

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