For most people, last week’s US presidential election proved to be somewhat a source of entertainment whilst for others, it was an ongoing source of stress. We all seemed to find ourselves asking, who will win? Have any of the numbers changed? What was meant to be election day turned out to be, “election week” as many have named it.
The elections began on November 3rd and the whole world was watching, eager to find out who will be the next president of the United States. Due to this year's pandemic, there was an option for people to send mail-in ballots so that they could avoid the risk of getting infected whilst waiting in line to vote. However, like every other election, in person voting was also allowed. As a result of this, the counting of the ballots had taken much longer than previous years and thus the results were not found out until November 7.
From the beginning, it was clear that Joe Biden would be favoured in the election due to Donald Trump’s increasing backlash on issues that ranged from his treatment of women and immigrants to his response to the Black Lives Matter movement, which caused an online campaign with the hashtag ‘#votehimout’.
As the results were coming in and everyone was watching eagerly, Joe Biden seemed to gain more electoral votes and win key states that put him on top of Donald Trump, as his number of votes was steadily increasing and Trump’s had remained at 214 for several days. In response to this, Donald Trump held a press conference on November 4, at 2 am to declare victory for an election that he was clearly not winning. The president stated that, “this is a fraud on the American Public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election.” This all came as a surprise to everyone watching as it was clear that a winner had not yet been announced and Trump was behind Joe Biden in terms of electoral votes. Following this statement, Trump said that, “ we want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We do not want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list”. Trump invoked the highest court, where there is clearly a republican majority, suggesting that it might intervene and grant him victory. The proceedings themselves have only begun on Monday, 9 November after Trump has sued several states.
This in turn, caused many Trump supporters to go on rallies to their nearest area where ballots were being counted and chanting “stop the count”. People who were responsible for counting these ballots did not comply however, and continued to do their job and even more so count them thoroughly in states such as Pennsylvania, so as to avoid any errors being made and the risk of being sued by Trump.
Two days later, it was announced that Joe Biden had won in the state of Pennsylvania, a state that was previously in favour of candidate Donald Trump. The state of Nevada was next to announce Biden’s victory giving him a total of 279 electoral votes, whilst Trump still remains at 214, almost a week after the election. Biden’s victory was announced on 7 November, with a wave of Americans going out into the streets to celebrate.
There is still uncertainty regarding the legal proceedings that Trump is carrying out and whether or not they will alter the results of this election.