Biden warns Trump against declaring early White House win

Bloomberg

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden warned that he wouldn’t let President Donald Trump declare victory in Tuesday’s election before the results are clear.
“My response is the president is not going to steal this election,” Biden told reporters during a campaign stop in Philadelphia.
He also condemned Trump supporters’ efforts to intimidate Biden backers, including an incident on a Texas highway and a partial shutdown of New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway.
“Folks, that’s not who we are,” he said. “We are so much better than this.”
Biden was responding to a report in Axios that Trump has told associates that he intends to declare victory early if the results show him ahead, even if the outcome isn’t really known.
Speaking to reporters in Charlotte, North Carolina, Trump denied the report, but also criticised the counting of late-arriving ballots as “terrible” and said his campaign intended to fight it.
“As soon as the election is over, we’re going in with our lawyers,” Trump said.
The former vice president urged supporters in the Democratic stronghold city to push past Trump’s efforts to discourage them going to the polls, as he kicked off a two-day final swing through the potentially pivotal state of Pennsylvania.
“Every day is a new reminder of how high the stakes are, of how far the other side will go to try to suppress the turnout, especially here in Philadelphia,” Biden said. “President Trump is terrified of what will happen in Pennsylvania. He knows that the people of Pennsylvania get to have their say, if you have your say, he doesn’t stand a chance.”
Biden spoke at a drive-in “souls to the polls” rally for Black voters, invoking the legacy of the late civil rights leader and Georgia Representative John Lewis.
The Biden campaign is focussed now on getting Black voters to the polls since they are more likely than White voters to prefer to vote in person on Election Day.

Philadelphia expects to need several days to count mail ballots
Bloomberg

Philadelphia officials said it “will easily take several days” to count the city’s large number of mail-in ballots, potentially delaying statewide election results from Pennsylvania that could decide a close presidential race.
Mayor Jim Kenney and Commissioner Lisa Deeley noted in an open letter to city voters that counties in Pennsylvania can’t start processing mail-in and absentee ballots until 7 am on Election Day — guaranteeing there will be ballots left to count after election night. They said more than 400,000 mail-in ballots had been received
so far in Philadelphia, the
commonwealth’s most-populous county, where three-quarters of registered voters are Democrats.
“This may determine the outcome in Philadelphia, and in the commonwealth as a whole,” Kenney and Deeley said in their letter, urging
patience.