Election Day has dragged into Election Week. A half-dozen or so battleground states still are counting their mail-in ballots because those Republican state legislatures refused to consider requests to allow the counting to begin a day or three before Election Day. That is, they wanted the election results to drag out, deferring to President Trump who has telegraphed for many months his intentions to challenge mail-in votes.

The speculation was that early results (reflecting votes cast on Election Day) would favor the president, which they did. This was because he has been rhetorically invalidating the mail-in process since the pandemic began, and his supporters listened. Democratic voters, however, respected the power of the pandemic and the legitimacy of the mail-in vote. So they mostly mailed it in. Therefore the bulk of Democratic votes were counted and posted later — much later — due to GOP state laws against “pre-canvassing,” i.e., to begin counting the ocean of mail-in votes sometime before Election Day.

Election Day 2020 Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Trump’s strategy was to see himself ahead on Election Day night, then get the courts to invalidate — stop the counting of — mail-in votes while he was still ahead. And he would declare himself the winner.

That’s not happening. ■

 

Headlines 2

COVID-19 Deaths

02/06/2020 — U.S.: 1 | World: 620
11/05/2020 — U.S.: 234,756 (est.)  |  World: 1,231,003 (est.)
Conservatively estimated Trump malfeasance deaths: 117,378 (50% of total U.S. deaths)*

The United States accounts for 4.2% of Earth’s population, 19% of world COVID-19 deaths.*

“Massive Russian Cyberattack on U.S. Hospitals, Threatening U.S. Election Network” (10/29/2020)
“Trump Pressured AG Barr to Go Easy on Turkish Bank Allied With President Erdoğan; Case Only Proceeded After Trump-Erdoğan Feud Erupted” (10/29/2020)
“ELECTION: Trump’s Closing Message: Don’t Believe COVID-19 Death Numbers, Doctors Are Conspiring to Get More Money; ‘Look at me, I got — if I got better, anyone will get better’” (10/30/2020)
“PANDEMIC: New 1-Day U.S. Record: 90K+, 9M Total Cases; 42 States w/ Rising Infections” (10/30/2020)
“PANDEMIC: Top WH Virus Dr., Deborah Birx, Privately Warns of New ‘deadly phase’” (11/2/2020)
“ELECTION: U.S. National, Presidential Election Day” (11/3/2020)
“ELECTION: Too Close to Call; Half-Dozen Battleground States Still Counting Mail-In Ballots” (11/4/2020)
“PANDEMIC: New 1-Day U.S. Record: 116,000+ Cases” (11/4/2020)
“ELECTION: Too Close to Call; Half-Dozen Battleground States Still Counting Mail-In Ballots” (11/5/2020)
“ECONOMY: 22M Jobs Lost Since Feb., Worst Since WWII; ½ Returned; 50% GDP Rebound” (11/5/2020)
“PANDEMIC: U.S. Has 4.2% of World Population, 19% of World COVID-19 Deaths” (11/5/2020)
“PANDEMIC: U.S./World: 9.7M/48.4M Cases; 234.8K/1.2M Deaths; 7:52 a.m. ET” (11/5/2020)

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*(Redlener, Irwin, MD, Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness director; MSNBC’s Deadline: White House; 10/1/2020.) (Gupta, Vin, MD, MPA, MSc, University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation professor, global health policy expert; “Dr. Vin Gupta: 70% of Lives Could Have Been Saved if Trump Acted on COVID-19 Earlier”; MSNBC.com; 9/23/2020.) (Glanz, James & Robertson, Campbell; “Lockdown Delays Cost at Least 36,000 Lives, [Columbia University] Data Show”; The New York Times; 5/20/2020.) (as conservatively extrapolated from COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University; 11/5/2020.)

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Trump Corruption Chronicles — We Must Never Forget