US Presidency: Biden maintains lead, slams Trump over bid to stop vote count
Posted by Starimagenews
•US Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden
Joe Biden’s White House campaign slammed President Donald Trump’s threat to try to stop the election vote count as “outrageous” early Wednesday, saying its legal team was ready to prevent such an “unprecedented” act.
“The president’s statement tonight about trying to shut down the counting of duly cast ballots was outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement as the election remained undecided.
“Never before in our history has a president of the United States sought to strip Americans of their voice in a national election.”
The comments came shortly after Trump delivered an extraordinary speech from the White House, in which he claimed that “we did win this election” despite neither candidate reaching the electoral vote threshold for victory.
“We want all voting to stop,” Trump said, appearing to mean halting the counting of mail-in ballots, which can be legally accepted by state election boards after Tuesday’s election — provided they were postmarked in time.
Several battleground states were still up in the air early Wednesday when Trump spoke, including Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Biden has long warned that Trump was seeking to diminish the integrity of mail-in voting, which has surged this year given the health concerns about going in-person to polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.