US election: Almost 100m early votes cast as record turnout looms
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Nearly 100m Americans have cast votes for tomorrow’s election already, with turnout expected to be at its highest in decades.
The total amount of ballots cast now sits at 97m, which is around 70 per cent of the 139m people who voted in the 2016 election – a record for total number of ballots cast.
This includes 61.2m mail-in ballots and 35.4m that have been cast in person at early voting booths across the country, according to the US Elections Project website.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden is focussing his final day messaging around the need for people to turn out and vote tomorrow.
At his Cleveland rally this morning, he said: “Millions of Americans have already voted. Millions more will vote today and tomorrow.
“And my message to you is simple – the power to change this country is in your hands.”
His running mate Kamala Harris had a similar message for reporters ahead of her rallies in the battleground state of Pennsylvania today.
“The plan is for the next I don’t know how many hours we have left to remind everyone of what’s at stake and to make sure that everyone votes and so that is where I am focused, she said.
“That’s why I’m here in Pennsylvania and we’re going to be covering a lot of ground today.”
Trump, meanwhile, has continued to question the validity of mail-in voting and has claimed that the Democrats are preparing to commit electoral fraud.
There was a report last night from Axios, which claimed the President has told confidants that he will claim victory tomorrow night prematurely if he is leading before tens of millions of early votes are cast.
The plan is reportedly to then challenge ballot counts in swing states that will still be counting early votes over the course of next week.
He denied he was preparing to claim victory prematurely last night, before then questioning the legitimacy of mail-in voting.
“I think it’s a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election. I think it’s a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over,” he said.
“We don’t want to have Pennsylvania, where you have a political governor, a very partisan guy…we don’t want to be in a position where he’s allowed, every day, to watch ballots come in.
“‘See if we can only find 10,000 more ballots’.”
Trump’s rhetoric about the legitimacy of early voting and supposed electoral fraud has stoked fears that there will be widespread violence and civil unrest on election night.
Businesses in major US cities have been boarding up in preparation for potential riots and looting, including in the nation’s capital.