Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden has moved closer to victory in the US presidential polls as election officials were counting votes in a number of states that will determine the outcome of the Tuesday voting.
Incumbent President and Republican candidate Donald Trump alleged fraud in voting, filed lawsuits and demanded recounts as the election outcome was hanging in the balance until 9:00am EST on Thursday [8:00pm Bangladesh time], two days after polls closed.
According to Reuters, with tensions rising, about 200 of Trump's supporters, some armed with rifles and handguns, gathered outside an election office in Phoenix, Arizona, following unsubstantiated rumours that votes were not being counted.
Anti-Trump protesters in other cities demanded that vote counting continue. Police arrested anti-Trump protesters in New York City and Portland, Oregon.
The presidential race was coming down to close contests in four states. Biden, 77, held narrow leads in Nevada while Trump, 74, was watching his slim advantage fade in must-win states Pennsylvania and Georgia as mail-in and absentee votes were being counted. Trump clung to a narrow lead in North Carolina as well, another must-win for him.
Trump had to win the states where he was still ahead and Nevada to triumph and avoid becoming the first incumbent US president to lose a re-election bid since fellow Republican George HW Bush in 1992.
AP news agency gave Biden a 264 to 214 lead over Trump in Electoral College votes, which are largely based on a state's population. The magic number for the winning candidate is 270 votes.
Biden predicted victory on Wednesday and launched a website to begin the transition to a Democratic-controlled White House.
Trump has long sought to undermine the credibility of the voting process if he lost. Since Tuesday, he has falsely declared victory, accused Democrats of trying to steal the election without evidence and vowed to fight states in court.
Trump's campaign fought to keep his chances alive with a call for a Wisconsin recount as well as lawsuits in several states to stop vote counting.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson called Trump team's lawsuit "frivolous" while Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said the state is not concerned about any cases that might come its way.
He told CNN that the state’s voting system is “pretty impenetrable when it comes to a legal challenge against us”.
Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in Georgia to require that Chatham County, which includes the city of Savannah, separate and secure late-arriving ballots to ensure they are not counted.
It also asked the US Supreme Court to allow Trump to join a pending lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania Republicans over whether the battleground state should be permitted to accept late-arriving ballots.
The manoeuvres amounted to a broad effort to contest the results of a still undecided election a day after millions of Americans went to the polls during the coronavirus pandemic that has upended daily life.
"They are finding Biden votes all over the place - in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!" Trump posted on Twitter.
Biden said every vote must be counted. "No one's going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever," he said.
