.jpg)
As officials in all states - including Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia - climb the mountain of uncounted mail in ballots Wednesday President Donald Trump expressed his doubt in the counting process.
“How come every time they count Mail-In ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?” Trump said.
In all, 26.6 million mail-in votes were cast in the 49 presidential, state and combined primaries that the Center examined for 2020, out of nearly 53 million total votes.
On one hand, this year’s surge in mail-in voting continues a years-long trend. But the magnitude of the increase also reflects people’s concerns about voting in person during the COVID-19 pandemic and changes made to their voting laws and procedures in response to the pandemic.
Michigan and Wisconsin, two states Trump won in 2016, were called by CNN for former Vice President Joe Biden. Some of the states not yet called were posting results as they were tallied Wednesday, such as Georgia and Arizona. Nevada officials said they did not plan to report new results until Thursday morning because of the influx of mail-in ballots.
Mail-in ballots hit records this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which favored Biden, where he encouraged Democrats to vote early, whereas in-person votes on Election Day, based on the polls, have given Trump an advantage. Chris Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College, said that while pre-race polling showed an extremely similar partisan split between mail ballot and in-person voters, Biden’s advantage will vary by county. “It’s hard to extrapolate exactly,” Borick said. “I think certainly Biden’s going to pick up substantial ground as these ballots are counted. I think there is a significant likelihood it puts him into the lead in Michigan. It’s not guaranteed, but there’s a clear path forward for him.”
Wisconsin finished counting almost all of its mail-in ballots early, after retaining workers going overnight. Biden did win Wisconsin, and also claimed victory in Michigan on Wednesday. Surrounding Biden’s victories in the two battleground states, the Trump campaign launched legal fights Wednesday over counting mail-in ballots in several battleground states, as the president’s potential to reelection began to decrease. On the other hand, there are four remaining states that could determine who the next President could be. Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania had issues of undelivered ballots which carried their counting process beyond the November 4 deadline. As the results continue to roll in, the power of mail-in ballots in this election prove to be a powerhouse in what candidate voter