Wednesday, November 11 Political News Briefs
Here are today’s political news briefs.
Trump wins Alaska
The AP has projected that President Donald Trump has won Alaska and its three electoral votes. It does not change AP’s projected outcome of the election, which has Joe Biden as the winner with at least 290 electoral votes.
Elections in Georgia and North Carolina
The AP has not yet called elections in two states: Georgia and North Carolina.
Georgia’s Sec. of State Raffensperger, a Republican, announced there would be a full recount of ballots cast in the election. The recount will be done by hand and will cover every county. As of today, Biden leads with about 14,000 votes. The hand recount has a deadline of November 20.
In North Carolina, Trump leads by about 77,000 votes, but there are 116,000 mail-in ballots and 41,000 provisional ballots left to tally.
Trump believes he is the winner of election
President Trump still believes that he is the winner of the election. He retweeted his own tweet from yesterday that said, “We will win!” The Trump campaign and Republican allies have filed multiple lawsuits in several states.
Allegations of voting fraud or irregularities
Attorney General Bill Barr authorized federal prosecutors to start investigations on credible allegations of voting fraud or irregularities. Texas’s Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced he is offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to an arrest and conviction for voter fraud.
A postal worker from Pennsylvania, Richard Hopkins, made a claim that the postmaster in Erie ordered postal workers to backdate mail-in ballots (that might be sent after Election Day). Hopkins later told postal office investigators that he made up the allegations and signed an affidavit to recant. However, he caused confusion because he posted a YouTube video on Tuesday night saying he never recanted and that his first statement was true. That video was tweeted by President Trump as a basis for voter fraud. The Erie postmaster said Hopkins’ allegations are 100% false and that he was disciplined multiple times.
[Sponsored Video from Sorenson: https://www.sorenson.com/]
NYT review of all 50 states finds no concerns about election outcome
The New York Times said they contacted state election officials in all 50 states that represented both political parties to ask about whether they thought there was voting fraud or other irregularities that affected the outcome of the presidential election. The Times said all the officials said there was no evidence of something that was so serious that it would affect the election results. Some states said there were “small problems” such as a few instances of illegal or double voting or some technical glitches or minor errors in math. But no state official shared deeper concerns that the election outcome was affected.
Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan wins reelection
Now, let’s go back to Alaska. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan won his reelection bid, defeating his Democratic challenger Al Gross. This means that Republicans officially hold 50 seats in the U.S. Senate to 48 Democratic seats. The remaining two seats will be decided in two Georgia runoff elections on January 5. I did a news video yesterday that went into that race in detail.
That’s all the political news briefs for today.
https://www.axios.com/election-results-2020-trump-biden-3a07f4c7-fb4d-4d62-b18b-392ff6f1eeb5.html
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-1-million-reward-evidence-arrest-conviction-voter
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/us/politics/voting-fraud.html
https://www.danpatrick.org/patrick-offers-up-to-1-million-in-rewards-for-voter-fraud-whistleblowers-tipsters/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/alaska-senate-race-republican-dan-sullivan-reelected