US election's validity intact despite Trump claims

NEW YORK, Nov 11 (AP): The U.S. presidential election was not tainted by widespread voter fraud or irregularities in how ballots were counted, despite a huge effort by President Donald Trump to prove otherwise.

In refusing to concede the election, Trump claims that he would have won were it not for "illegal" votes counted in several states that he lost or where he is currently trailing. But Trump and his allies haven't offered any proof, and their legal challenges have largely been rejected by the courts.

Nonpartisan investigations of previous elections have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. State officials from both parties, as well as international observers, have also stated that the 2020 election went well.

A look at the election and the allegations Trump has made:

More than 150 million people voted in the presidential election. As of Tuesday night, one week after the election, President-elect Joe Biden had received over 5 million more votes than Trump.

Biden has 290 votes in the Electoral College to Trump's 214. The Associated Press has not yet determined the winner in Alaska, Georgia or North Carolina.

Of the states Trump has most targeted as allegedly tainted by fraud, Biden holds small but significant leads in all of them. The Democrat leads in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Several states successfully enacted voting measures during the coronavirus pandemic. The Democratic stronghold of California improved its mail-in balloting system, for example, and delivered as expected for Biden.

But Trump easily won reliably Republican Nebraska, North Dakota and Montana, all states that also significantly expanded vote by mail this year.

Two decades after it was at the center of a disputed recount, Florida has adopted early voting and allowed voters to cast absentee ballots without having an excuse. The AP called Florida for Trump at 12:35 a.m. Wednesday.

Vote counting was slow in three Midwestern states that went for Trump four years ago and flipped to Biden this time: the "blue wall" of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

That's because of an increase in mail-in ballots, which the Biden campaign pushed its supporters to use as a safety measure because of the pandemic. Trump baselessly argued that mail-in ballots were subject to fraud and encouraged his supporters to show up to vote in person on Election Day.

As a result, Trump led all three states in Election Day voting, but those leads were erased as mail-in ballots were counted.

All three states largely ignored advice from nonpartisan observers to expand the window for counting mail-in ballots before Election Day. Michigan gave election officials one day, and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin did not allow counting beforehand. All three states have Republican legislatures.

The Trump campaign has filed more than a dozen lawsuits in at least five states. On Tuesday night, campaign officials said they would file a new lawsuit in Michigan alleging, in part, that their poll watchers were harassed or turned away and asking the secretary of state not to certify the election results.

Attorney Mark "Thor" Hearne promised "overwhelming evidence" and piles of affidavits.Poll watchers have no role in counting votes.