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    Mail-in ballot tracker: counting election votes in US swing states

    This piece is published in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published
    An unprecedented number of Americans have voted by mail this year to avoid Covid-19 risk. Joe Biden’s supporters said they were more likely to vote by mail while Donald Trump’s supporters said they were more likely to vote in person. With postal delays, rejected ballots and a dearth of funding, the process isn’t always smooth – ballots can be rejected for multiple reasons, and due to court challenges, election rules are changing even while voting is underway. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republican officials have spent the last months casting doubt on the mail-in voting process, paving the way for legal battles during the vote count.
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    With data from University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald, the Guardian and ProPublica are tracking votes in politically competitive states through the election to find out how many people are voting by mail, how their votes are counted, and what it means for the 2020 election. Our tracker will be updated as we obtain updated information, as well as other state data. We will also be investigating any aberrations and issues in the mail-in voting process as we find them, and telling the stories of the people and communities affected most.
    Georgia
    16 electoral votes
    Democrats believe Joe Biden may be able to win a state long seen as a Republican bastion, which would be a coup for the campaign. More people have already returned their ballots than voted by mail in total in 2016. The state has thousands of outstanding ballots to count, and liberal cities like Atlanta are expected to skew more towards Biden. Voters must return their ballots to election offices by election day in order to have them counted.

    Wisconsin
    10 electoral votes
    Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes, a year when voter turnout in key cities such as Milwaukee was also low. This year, voting rights groups are pushing the state to count ballots if they are postmarked by election day but arrive afterward. Currently, mail-in ballots must be received by 3 November at 8pm.

    Pennsylvania
    20 electoral votes
    Home to some of the most intense legal battles of the election, the state where Joe Biden was born could be the deciding factor in 2020. Pennsylvania had been a Democratic stronghold for six presidential elections until Trump carried the state by 0.7% in 2016. It’s very possible that the election result in Pennsylvania will not be known for days. That’s because Philadelphia, the state’s biggest city, could take days to count its mail-in ballots, according to officials there. Ballots must be postmarked by election day and received by 6 November at 5pm to be counted.

    Florida
    29 electoral votes
    Few states were more important on election night than Florida, where Trump has already been projected the winner. Voters must return their ballots to election offices by 7pm on election night to have them counted. Local election officials are required to contact voters if the signature on their ballot does not match the one on file.

    North Carolina
    15 electoral votes
    A battleground state Donald Trump carried in 2016, North Carolina is in the spotlight for being still too close to call. The state has seen an unprecedented surge in mail-in voting, not typically used widely in the state. Ballots must be postmarked by election day and received no later than 12 November at 5pm.

    Michigan
    16 electoral votes
    Michigan is one of the midwestern states that offer a clear path of victory for Joe Biden. The state has seen a massive change in voting procedures since 2016, including a constitutional amendment that gives everyone in the state the right to vote by mail without an excuse. Ballots must be postmarked by election day and received that day by 8pm.

    Ohio
    18 electoral votes
    Trump won the swing state easily in 2016, and was declared the projected winner on Tuesday night. Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by 2 November, or in person on election day, and received by 13 November at 7.30pm.

    Iowa
    Six electoral votes
    Donald Trump won Iowa on election night, while Democrats failed to oust the first-term GOP senator Joni Ernst. Anyone in Iowa is eligible to vote by mail and must return their ballot to election officials by the close of the polls on election day to have it counted.

    Minnesota
    10 electoral votes
    Trump claimed he could win Minnesota this year, though he lost the reliable blue state in 2016 by 1.5%, because of rural voters who favor the president. But after police killed the unarmed Black man George Floyd in the state earlier this year, it also launched the biggest protest movement and civil unrest in decades – a factor that could play into voter turnout. Ballots must be postmarked by 3 November, and received by 10 November. More

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    Vote totals expected to swing back and forth as key US states continue to count

    Many Americans woke up bleary-eyed Wednesday morning after a late night of watching presidential returns as key places in battleground states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia, continue to count votes.The message from experts and election officials to Americans have been to stay patient as the votes are counted because there’s nothing unusual about the ongoing count. Election officials and experts have said for months that counting was likely to extend past election night because of a surge in mail-in ballots that take longer to tally.Donald Trump falsely claimed early Wednesday morning that he won the election and pledged to go to take legal action to stop counting, including going to the US supreme court, even though there were still a significant number of ballots to be counted.Vote totals are expected to swing back and forth on Wednesday in key states as different places report their counts. The president suggested Wednesday the swings were evidence of nefarious activity, but that’s not true. The swings reflect the fact that different parts of a state that have different political leanings are reporting their results at different times.Democratic-friendly areas such as Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia have been slower to report their results than other jurisdictions in their respective states because of the higher volume of ballots. Republicans who control the state legislatures in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania also refused to move up the deadline to count absentee ballots, contributing to the delayed counts Wednesday.To win the presidency, Joe Biden needs to win at least the states of Wisconsin and Michigan, key battlegrounds that Trump won in 2016. In Michigan, Biden holds a narrow lead, but officials in some of the state’s largest places, including Detroit, are still counting ballots. It’s difficult to know when the state will have final results, but Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, said Wednesday there should be a more “complete picture” in the state by the end of the day.As counting continued, the United States Postal Service (USPS) released new data Wednesday morning showing poor on-time delivery rates for ballots across the country. In the Detroit postal district, about 79% of ballots were delivered within the agency’s window for on-time delivery, and in the area that covers most of Wisconsin, 76% were delivered on time. In the Philadelphia district just 66.3% were on time. Michigan and Wisconsin both require voters to return their ballots by the close of polls on election day in order to have them counted.But USPS said in a legal filing the numbers are “unreliable” and do “not reflect accurate service performance” because they don’t reflect mail taken out of normal process to be delivered faster closer to election day.A federal judge in Washington DC is also set to hold a hearing Wednesday after USPS failed to comply with an order to perform a last-minute sweep of election facilities after the agency said there were 300,000 ballots that did not have an outgoing scan. The agency has cautioned these ballots may not contain that scan because they were expedited.Democrats had urged voters to avoid the mail and return their ballots in person, and that message appears to have successfully gotten that message out in Milwaukee.In recent weeks, a sorting facility in the overwhelmingly Democratic city was processing about 3,000 absentee ballots daily, but only sent through 44 ballots on Tuesday, said Ron Kania, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers branch 2. The deadline for ballots to count in Wisconsin was 8pm on election day.“We trickled down to practically zero the last couple days,” Kania said. His facility conducted regular sweeps for ballots throughout election day and expedited any that they found.“As far as I know, everything we received went out,” he added.If Biden does carry Wisconsin and Michigan, he only needs to carry Nevada to win the presidency. Biden holds a narrow lead in the state, but the secretary of state’s office said Tuesday no more vote totals would be reported until Thursday morning. Trump’s campaign foreshadowed legal action in the state Wednesday morning, saying it was confident the president would carry the state if all “legal ballots” were counted.In Pennsylvania, vote totals at 1pm showed Trump leading by about 469,000 votes. But the state still needs to count “millions of ballots”, Kathy Boockvar, the state’s top election official, said Wednesday. In Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold, the city’s top election official said officials had counted 141,000 out of 351,000 mail-in votes Wednesday morning.In Pennsylvania, there’s also an additional complication. Because of a state supreme court ruling, the state is legally required to count ballots that arrive by Friday. It’s unclear how many ballots will arrive between now and Friday.There are also about 200,000 votes that still need to be counted in Georgia, the state’s top election official said Wednesday. The state, long seen as a Republican bastion, is considerably closer this year. Trump led as of Wednesday morning by 109,000 votes and there are at least 107,000 outstanding votes in Democratic-leaning counties, the Journal-Constitution reported.Tom Perkins contributed to this report More

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    US elects first trans state senator and first black gay congressman

    A deeply polarised US electorate has given the country its first transgender state senator and its first black gay congressman – but also its first lawmaker to have openly supported the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.
    All four members of the progressive “Squad” of Democratic congresswomen of colour – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib – have been comfortably re-elected, and Sarah McBride’s victory in Delaware has made her the highest-ranking trans official in the US.
    “I hope tonight shows an LGBTQ kid that our democracy is big enough for them, too,” McBride, 30, who easily defeated the Republican Steve Washington to represent Delaware’s first state senate district, tweeted after the election was called.
    McBride, a former spokesperson for the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, was a trainee in the White House during the Obama administration and became the first trans person to speak at a major political convention when she addressed Democrats in Philadelphia in 2016.
    “For Sarah to shatter a lavender ceiling in such a polarising year is a powerful reminder that voters are increasingly rejecting the politics of bigotry in favour of candidates who stand for fairness and equality,” said Annise Parker of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, which trains and supports out candidates.
    In Vermont, Taylor Small, 26, has become the state’s first openly transgender legislator after winning 41% of the vote to make it to the House of Representatives, making her the fifth “out” trans state legislator in the US. More

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    US election 2020: Biden sees narrow lead over Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin as results awaited – live updates

    Key events

    Show

    10.18am EST10:18
    Democrats: ‘Results indicate we are on a clear path to victory this afternoon’

    9.16am EST09:16
    AP running vote tally shows Biden holds a narrow lead in Michigan for first time

    8.08am EST08:08
    Former Trump adviser John Bolton calls president’s election comments ‘a disgrace’

    7.54am EST07:54
    Paths to victory remain for both Biden and Trump – but Biden has more

    Live feed

    Show

    10.18am EST10:18

    Democrats: ‘Results indicate we are on a clear path to victory this afternoon’

    In a live address Joe Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon has said Joe Biden is on course to become the next president of the US. She said:

    We believe we are in a clear path to victory by this afternoon, we expect that the vice president will have leads in states that put him over 270 electoral votes today. The vice president will garner more votes than any presidential candidate in history, and we’re still counting. He has won over 50% of the popular vote. We are on track to win in Michigan by more than Donald Trump did in 2016. To win in Wisconsin by more than Trump did in 2016. To win in Pennsylvania by more than Trump did in 2016. And we flipped one of his states, Arizona.

    10.14am EST10:14

    The Democratic party are about to broadcast what they are calling a ‘Election protection briefing’. Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon and former Counsel to president Barack Obama Bob Bauer will be talking shortly.

    Joe Biden
    (@JoeBiden)
    We won’t rest until everyone’s vote is counted. Tune in as my campaign manager @jomalleydillon and campaign adviser Bob Bauer give an update on where the race stands. https://t.co/Rwz4iR25B3

    November 4, 2020

    10.11am EST10:11

    Here’s the state of play – excuse the pun – in the states that have not yet been declared for one candidate or the other. We are expecting results from at least Wisconsin and Michigan later today. The others may take a little longer. More

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    'A disgrace': former aide John Bolton slams Donald Trump's early win claim – video

    The former Trump US national security adviser John Bolton has said the president’s premature claim of victory in the election is ‘a disgrace’.
    Early on Wednesday, Trump said he would take the election to the supreme court to stop votes being counted. He falsely claimed victory, as the election remained too close to call with millions of votes yet to be counted
    US election 2020: Joe Biden has narrow lead over Trump in Wisconsin as result awaited – live updates
    US braces for long wait for election results as Trump falsely declares victory More

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    Faith v fraud: Biden and Trump react during the US election count – video

    With the US presidential election count still too  close to call, Joe Biden said he was optimistic about the outcome and that it the race was not over until every vote had been counted. Meanwhile, Donald Trump falsely claimed he had already won and spoke of a fraud against the American public
    Biden addresses supporters in Delaware: ‘We’re on track to win this election’  More

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    Could Trump really settle US election result in the supreme court?

    Given Donald Trump’s lifelong predilection for tying up opponents in the courts, and his long-stated threat to do the same with an election result that threatened to go against him, his call to have the 2020 election settled in the supreme court is not a surprise.
    So can he do it?
    Trump may, with this in mind, have filled the supreme court with conservative appointees, but things aren’t so straightforward. The supreme court is the final court of appeal in the US and has discretion over which cases it should hear, largely relating to challenges to cases heard in lower courts on points of federal law and the constitution.
    So a lot of action will happen initially at state-level courts – the election has prompted a spate of new cases in the hotly contested battleground state of Pennsylvania, including two due to be heard later on Wednesday.
    What has made the current election landscape more of a minefield is the fact the coronavirus pandemic has led states to look for ways to make voting safer, including expanding absentee ballots, which has opened states up to challenges in the courts over issues such as proposed extensions to the period in which late mail-in votes are counted.
    It is important to remember that election challenges in state courts are nothing new, sometimes without merit, and often have little impact in the end. However, one important exception to that was the 2000 election where a series of legal challenges over faulty voting procedures in Florida handed the election to George W Bush.
    What’s the thrust of Trump’s tactic?
    With more than 40 pre-election cases by Republicans, Trump’s strategy is to argue that any measure to make voting easier and safer in the midst of a pandemic is unconstitutional and open to fraud, a framing aimed at the supreme court.
    A second argument that has been deployed several times is that many of the measures to ensure voting is easy have been made by state officials – like governors – rather than state legislatures, opening a path, say conservatives, for a constitutional challenge.

    How could this work?
    The most common scenario is for lawyers to challenge the way an election was conducted locally and seek to have votes discarded. In the key state of Pennsylvania, conservative groups have already ramped up cases to ensure late mail-in ballots are not counted, with two cases due to be heard on Wednesday.
    However, Pennsylvania requires an unusually high burden of proof for challenging elections, including written affidavits detailing wrongdoing.
    Pennsylvania is already on the supreme court’s radar in this respect. Republicans in the state have already appealed against a Pennsylvania supreme court decision ordering state election officials to accept mail-in ballots that arrive up to three days after the election, relying on an interpretation of the state’s own constitution.
    The US supreme court deferred hearing this case before the election but in a case that it did rule on, the court sided with a Republican challenge saying the state could not count late mail in ballots in Wisconsin. The supreme court chief justice John Roberts made clear, however, that “different bodies of law and different precedents” meant the court did not consider the situation in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as the same.
    Isn’t that good news for Democrats?
    It’s difficult to know. The Wisconsin decision was delivered before Trump’s third pick for the supreme court, Amy Coney Barrett, formally joined the bench last week, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority.
    Trump’s hope, as he has made very clear, is that this would help in the event he challenged the election result, but it is also unclear how Barrett would respond given Trump’s comments. And she could recuse herself from hearing any election-related cases because of a perceived conflict.
    Where else could we see challenges?
    Michigan, if it is close, is an outlier in that it has no formally laid-out system for a challenge, although any recount is automatically triggered by a margin of less than 2,000 votes.
    North Carolina, for instance, also has a challenge to a late voting extension before the courts. It all becomes something of moot point should Biden secure enough of a lead in the electoral college.
    What’s the worst-case scenario?
    The closer the outcome in the electoral college, the more messy things become, with the memory of Florida in 2000 looming above everything. The closest of results led to 35 messy days of legal challenges and laborious hand recounts, which gave the election to George W Bush after the state was originally called by news organisations for the Democratic challenger Al Gore.
    Bush took 271 of the 538 electoral votes, winning Florida by fewer than 600 votes, after a recount was halted by the supreme court, making Bush the first Republican president since 1888 to win despite losing the popular vote. More

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    Mark Kelly on Senate win in Arizona: 'Tonight is about getting to work' – video

    Mark Kelly, the Democrat and former astronaut, focused on bipartisanship in a speech shortly before he was declared the winner of the Senate race in Arizona. ‘I’m confident that when all the votes are counted, we’re going to be successful in this mission,’ Kelly told supporters. ‘The work starts now.’
    The retired US navy captain, who ran his campaign by playing up his outsider status in politics, said: ‘Our state doesn’t need a Democrat senator or a Republican senator. We need an Arizona senator. There is nothing we can’t achieve if we work together’
    Results come in after polls close – as it happened More