By 
WASHINGTON: A disastrous election process and an electoral system that would embarrass a fledgling democracy in Africa or Latin America has sowed seeds of chaos, confusion, and bitter wrangling in the world’s premier nation.
With every state having its own rules and process of voting and counting of ballots, leads see-sawed in several battleground states giving no clear picture of the winner even as President Trump claimed he had won before all votes were tabulated. The surge in mail-in voting caused by the pandemic compounded an already flawed system that is known for voter suppression, particularly of minorities.
Here is how it played out in key states that will determine the final outcome
In Michigan, Trump established an early lead before Biden came back in the final stages when votes from Wayne country, which includes the metropolitan Detroit area with a large black population, help him eke out a small lead of 10,000 votes.
Similarly in Wisconsin, Biden surged back into a small 20,000-vote lead when ballots from the metropolitan Milwaukee region was counted.
Democrats expect a similar turnout in Georgia and Pennsylvania when votes from the metropolitan Atlanta region and metropolitan Philadelphia region are counted.
All four cities have large black populations that tend to favor the Biden-Harris ticket, thus introducing an explosive racial element into the election, with Democrats alleging Trump is trying to disenfranchise and suppress black voters.
Trump won Wisconsin by only around 10,000 votes and Michigan by only around 24,000 votes in 2016. Now that the tables were being turned, the US President appeared not to accept the reversal.
As his lead evaporated in the battleground states in the morning hours of Wednesday when counting continued despite his calls to freeze it, Trump tweeted “Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong!”
“How come every time they count Mail-In ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?”, he tweeted a short time later.
Some leading Republicans too slammed Trump for trying to torpedo the counting, pointing out that he still stood a chance of winning if all votes were counted. “I was very distressed by what I heard the president say. Using the word “fraud” [to describe] people counting votes is wrong,” said Rick Santorun, a former lawmaker and Trump associate on one TV discussion. “I disagree with what he did tonight,” added Chris Christie, a former Republican governor of New Jersey.
The election process allows up to a week to count ballots from overseas military personnel, which are expected to trend towards Trump.
State officials in Pennsylvania said they would “vigorously defend against any attack” against the counting process by the federal government.
“Our democracy is being tested. This is a stress test for the nation’s ideals,” Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Tom Wolf said.
Source From : Times Of India
