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5 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 05.11.2020 US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden re- main locked in tight races in several battleground states across the country with the American election producing no winner so far, and with many an- alysts predicting vote counting could continue into late Thursday and even Friday. And with counting still underway, the final result will depend on the out- come in the northern states of Penn- sylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the mid-western state of Nevada. This is where the key states stand be- fore the paper went to print. Michigan After trailing all night in Michigan, Biden pulled ahead of Trump on Wednesday morning, with votes still left to be counted in Wayne County, a Democratic stronghold, and places like Macomb County in subur- ban Detroit and Grand Rapids in Kent County. As it stands, Biden is lead- ing with 49.3% with 2,516,513 votes, and Trump with 49.1% and 2,506,650 votes. The results are expected at 12pm EST. Pennsylvania Trump is current- ly ahead in Pennsylvania by about 618,000 votes, but that lead is not insurmountable for Joe Biden. As it stands Trump leads with 54.7% with 2,977,987, and Biden with 43.9% with 2,390,331 votes. The vote in Pennsyl- vania may not be out until Thursday. Wisconsin Biden built a slim lead in the state overnight, anchored by a surge of absentee voting and all votes being counted in Milwaukee County, a reliably Democratic stronghold. With the major counties in and 97% of the vote counted, Democrats projected confidence overnight that the lead would hold. Biden leads with 49.4% and 1,630,337 votes and Trump with 48.8% and with 1,609,640 votes. The results for Wisconsin should be out Wednesday morning (EST). Nevada As noted before, Nevada is a source of risk. Biden finished the night with a 7,000-vote lead however the gap is narrowing. Biden is current- ly in the lead with 49.3% with 588,252 votes, and Trump with 48.7% and 580,605 votes. The results are not ex- pected until Thursday (EST). The cliff hanger election is causing tension in a country deeply split on economic and racial issues. Trump needs victories in two of these key battle states, to go beyond the 270 electoral college votes and se- cure a second mandate in the White House. If Biden wins Arizona and Nevada, he also needs a victory in two of the three northern states to win the elec- tion. Daily life has been upended by the coronavirus, which has killed more than 232,000 Americans and cost mil- lions of jobs. In his first comments, Biden urged his supporters to stay the course, ex- pressing confidence that he will carry Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Trump, on the other hand, claimed he will be winning big but still cast doubt on the counting of mail-in bal- lots, threatening to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court. The Electoral college e US president is not elected by a majority of the popular vote. Under the Constitution, the candidate who wins the majority of 538 electors, known as the Electoral College, becomes the next president. In 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton but secured 304 elec- toral votes to her 227. e candidate who wins each state's popular vote typically earns that state's electors. is year, the electors meet on December 14 to cast votes. Both chambers of Congress will meet on January 6 to count the votes and name the winner. Normally, governors certify the re- sults in their respective states and share the information with Congress. But some academics have outlined a scenario in which the governor and the legislature in a closely contested state submit two different election results. Battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Caro- lina all have Democratic governors and Republican-controlled legislatures. According to legal experts, it is un- clear in this scenario whether Congress should accept the governor's electoral slate or not count the state's electoral votes at all. While most experts view the sce- nario as unlikely, there is historical precedent. e Republican-controlled Florida legislature considered submit- ting its own electors in 2000 before the Supreme Court ended the contest be- tween Bush and Gore. In 1876, three states appointed "dueling electors," prompting Congress to pass the Elec- toral Count Act (ECA) in 1887. Under the act, each chamber of Con- gress would separately decide which slate of "dueling electors" to accept. As of now, Republicans hold the Senate while Democrats control the House of Representatives, but the electoral count is conducted by the new Con- gress, which will be sworn in on Jan- uary 3. If the two chambers disagree, it's not entirely clear what would happen. The act says that the electors ap- proved by each state's "executive" should prevail. Many scholars inter- pret that as a state's governor, but oth- ers reject that argument. The law has never been tested or interpreted by the courts. Ned Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, called the ECA's wording "virtually impenetrable" in a 2019 paper exploring the possibility of an Electoral College dispute. Another unlikely possibility is that Trump's Vice President Mike Pence, in his role as Senate president, could try to throw out a state's disput- ed electoral votes entirely if the two chambers cannot agree, according to Foley's analysis. In that case, the Electoral College Act does not make clear whether a candidate would still need 270 votes, a majority of the total, or could prevail with a majority of the remaining elec- toral votes - for example, 260 of the 518 votes that would be left if Penn- sylvania's electors were invalidated. "It is fair to say that none of these laws has been stress-tested before," Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer who rep- resented the Bush campaign during the 2000 dispute, told reporters in a conference call on October 20. The parties could ask the Supreme Court to resolve any congression- al stalemate, but it's not certain the court would be willing to adjudicate how Congress should count electoral votes. 'Contingent election' A determination that neither candi- date has secured a majority of elector- al votes would trigger a "contingent election" under the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. That means the House of Representatives chooses the next president, while the Senate se- lects the vice president. Each state delegation in the House gets a single vote. As of now, Repub- licans control 26 of the 50 state dele- gations, while Democrats have 22; one is split evenly and another has seven Democrats, six Republicans and a Libertarian. A contingent election also takes place in the event of a 269-269 tie af- ter the election; there are several plau- sible paths to a deadlock in 2020. Any election dispute in Congress would play out ahead of a strict dead- line - January 20, when the Consti- tution mandates that the term of the current president ends. Under the Presidential Succession Act, if Congress still has not declared a presidential or vice presidential win- ner by then, the Speaker of the House would serve as acting president. Nan- cy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, is the current speaker. Down to the wire: US election too close to call as Trump and Biden fight over four key states

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