By L. Parsons Democrat Joseph Biden has been elected President of the United States along with Kamala Harris as Vice President following a narrow win and a tension-filled week of ballot counting. The general election, held Tuesday, Nov. 3, was not called until early in the morning hours of Saturday, Nov. 7. Biden pulled ahead of President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania making it mathematically impossible for the President to reach the required 270 electoral votes to continue a second term. Biden was reported to have garnered 290 electoral votes to Trump’s 214 and will take over the White House in January 2021 with Harris, the first black woman to hold this high a political ranking. Biden and Harris received 74,856,818 votes nationally as Trump and Vice President Mike Pence garnered 70,598,104 votes. Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen took 1,726,753 votes, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins saw 348,020 and other candidates took 382,504 votes. The results are still under scrutiny as of press time and Trump reportedly has filed lawsuits in several states where the vote count was close and has also demanded recounts in others while claiming voter fraud without any apparent evidence. According to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, the actual rate of voter fraud is between 0.00004 percent and 0.0009 percent. Following the election calls began streaming into the Arizona Attorney General’s office claiming that poll workers had given voters Sharpie markers to fill in their ballots. The concern was the felt tip markers were bleeding through to the other side of the two-sided ballot, causing the ballot to be spoiled and uncountable. In a press conference, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs stated, “Those ballots are being counted. I can assure you that nobody, no trained employed polling place worker is going to give you a pen to mark your ballot that is going to invalidate your ballot. They knew what they were doing and those ballots are being counted.” Arizona State Attorney General Mark Brnovich agreed saying, “Every vote does need to get counted. We need to realize as Americans that peddling in conspiracy theories or undermining the credibility of elections doesn’t do anybody any good, regardless of where they live.” Biden’s Arizona victory with 1,626,943 votes is only the third time in the state’s history that the majority has selected a Democratic president. The first was in 1948, with Harry S. Truman and the second was Bill Clinton in 1992. Trump received 1,606,370 Arizona votes. A slim margin by national standards.
