we have live election results as they're posted. we'll keep you updated. have a good day, everyone. good morning, america. breaking news. too close to call. president trump and former vice president biden neck and neck. locked in an incredibly tight race for the white house. several states too close to call. just hours ago, the president baselessly tried to declare victory. >> we will win this and as far as i'm concerned we already have. have won it. >> falsely claiming his supporters are being disenfranchised, that he's the victim of fraud and calling for an end to the counting in states where he is ahead. even threatening to take his challenge to the supreme court with millions of ballots still to be counted. biden calls for calm and patience. >> we believe we're on track to win this election and it ain't over until every vote is counted. every ballot is counted. >> all eyes on those key swing states. a big victory for the president in florida and ohio. biden pulling ahead in arizona,

wisconsin, georgia and michigan still up for grabs. plus, the nail biter in the critical state of pennsylvania that could decide the election. we're breaking down all of the battlegrounds still in play and still counting this morning. as many as 160 million americans casting their vote. with the most divisive election of our generation on the line, our powerhouse political team is spread out all across the country breaking down the final sprint to 270 electoral votes. the fight to the finish is not over on this history making morning. >> this is morning after. we're live on the west coast. our viewers out there. a historic morning. the race for the white house still very much on edge.

we have been tracking this nail-biter all night and all morning. we're watching something we have never seen before. all the key battleground states still too close to call. you see president trump has picked up 213 electorate votes. joe biden has 225 electoral votes, 19 states. the question of who's going to win those key battlefroundz that are still out there -- arizona and nevada, biden is ahead there and he's ahead now in michigan. pennsylvania and georgia are still out there. as well. as we said joe biden has the lead right now in electoral votes and the poup hear vote. >> and millions of votes are still being counted across the country. the votes still being counted there in philadelphia. >> we'll be hearing live for the wolf administration in pennsylvania and the states of michigan this morning as well as the votes are being counted in the key states.

that's the white house right there where around 2:00 this morning president trump essentially declared victory, falsely claiming he was the victim of fraud in this election. calling in supreme court to stop the counting, that was an empty threat. the supreme court isn't going to step into this race right now. mary bruce is with the biden campaign in wilmington, delaware. good morning, mary. >> reporter: george, this race is still very much up in the air right now and as more of this vote is tallied, the margin between the candidates in key battleground states is only growing tighter, none of that prevented the president coming out baselessly declaring victory threatening that legal fight, while the biden team is promising to fight this morning and guarantee every vote is counted. this morning, the white house hanging in the balance with the race in several key battleground states still too close to call.

but even though millions of votes still need to be counted, president trump falsely claiming he won. and telling the country he'll call on the supreme court to end the election. experts say that would be an illegitimate move. >> we were getting ready to win this election. frankly, we did win this election. we'll be going to the u.s. supreme court. we want all voting to stop. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list. okay? >> reporter: the president has no power to stop legitimately cast votes from being counted. and there have been no signs of any foul play. the biden campaign calling the president's remarks a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of american citizens. trump did have a better night an than expected, outperforming the polls once again and pulling in new voters. he's now projected to pick up ohio, texas and florida, critical wins keeping his re-election hopes alive. but he's still far from the

finish line. and joe biden also has a clear path to victory. holding on to blue states trump tried to flip like minnesota and with a substantial lead in arizona, a state that went red in 2016. speaking to supporters after midnight at a drive-in rally in delaware biden urging patience and projecting confidence without declaring victory. >> i'm here to tell you tonight we believe we're on track to win this election. it ain't over until every vote is counted. every ballot is counted. >> reporter: because of the surge in mail-in voting due to the pandemic we've known for months that in many states it could take days to tally all the ballots. now right now all eyes are of course on those critical blue wall states. trump is ahead in pennsylvania. but of course much of the mail-in vote yet still hasn't been tallied. biden has a narrow lead in michigan and wisconsin but it's not over yet, george, and in

georgia and north carolina, those races still too close to call. >> mary, we know that the biden high command is doing a zoom press briefing, how would you describe the mood inside the campaign? >> they've grown increasely confident. one official telling me that the 2020 race is moving to a conclusion and moving to a conclusion in our favor, so they are confident, but, george, they're furious with the president's actions overnight, calling trump's statement outrageous, they reiterate they have a very robust legal team standing by that they'll fight to make sure all of those votes counted. as we saw the president speaking at the white house just hours ago after 2:00 a.m. eastern time and now for more on the mood inside the trump camp let's go to our senior white house correspondent cecilia vega. good morning, cecilia. >> reporter: good morning. things are coming in very quickly right now. the president just tweeted it's

the first hearing we're hearing from him this morning. here's what he saying, one by one this ballots started to magically disappear, surprise ballot dumps were counted. that's just factually not at all accurate, not what we have seen happen last night. we're hearing from the campaign as we speak, they're expressing overall confidence in the map, they feel very confident in what they're seeing in michigan, nevada, georgia, they believe the president will win nevada and they are, again, fueling this narrative that the president spent last night in that stunning press conference where he's accusing democrats of essentially trying to steal this election, of course that's not what's happening, either. what we're seeing is the america's democracy at its best, working towards to counting these votes. this was a stunning speech that we heard from the president. no surprise. we saw this happening.

he had been ramping-up this fraud conspiracy in the days leading up to election day. a strategy they'll be spending for the next few days to come. >> cecilia, let me follow up on that, it's important right now zlet's bring in tom llamas, let's go to the board, let's follow up with what cecilia was talking about, that president said about these being some surprise ballot dumps. they were simply the counting of the ballots that had already been sent in. >> every vote deserves to be counted. actually we expected these late-night dumps around 3:00, 4:00 a.m. and that's exactly what happened. we saw it happened in milwaukee, it's happening in throughout and it will happen in philadelphia as well. >> each side's possible path to victory, starting out with former vice president biden, he's leading in arizona and

nevada, tell everybody what happens if you give those two states to joe biden right now. >> we gave alaska to president trump and maine to joe biden. historically that's how they break. arizona and nevada for joe biden, and wisconsin, where he also has a lead. look at joe biden's total. he's at 254, he has a narrow edge now in michigan now, 270, let's give that back to donald trump, pennsylvania, 274. if georgia if he wins there, 270. three paths this morning. >> the flip side if arizona, nevada go to joe biden donald trump has to win every other state in play. >> michigan, pennsylvania and he has to win georgia, he's at 268, he has to pick up north carolina as well. again, he's behind in the three others. we'll be watching the votes coming in. a little tougher, again a lot of vote still needs to be counted. >> still waiting for votes to be

counted in michigan, pennsylvania, georgia and beyond. tom, thanks very much. we'll go to michigan, george, the state is still up for grabs, but biden has just taken the lead. we'll go to juju chang in l lansing with the very latest there. >> reporter: within the last hour, joe biden has squeaked ahead of president trump and by a margin of about 10,000 votes, ironically the margin of victory that president trump won this state's unlikely victory in 2016. poll workers worked throughout the night. there are still 1% of the overall vote still to be counted. hundreds of thousands of votes still out there. many coming from the democratic juggernaut wayne county, which is detroit, 30% of their vote still needs to be counted. the naacp in detroit, they told me about the 100 lawyers that

fanned out across the larger detroit area to make sure that there was no voter suppression, but the reverend was saying his goal was to get souls to the polls, not only the naacp lawyers, there were 30,000 volunteer poll workers who were tallying ballots bipartisan and also 600 poll challengers, again 300 from each party to simply observe that everything was happening above board and the attorney general is saying this morning as well as the secretary of state that they're confident that every vote will count and we'll count every vote here in michigan. robin. >> kudos to those poll workers. we know that p. as we said could also be one of those states to determine this election. eva pilgrim is in philadelphia with the state of the race there. good morning,

>>. we'll turn to wisconsin, where they have been counting ballots all day and all night. deborah roberts is there with an update. >> reporter: good morning, michael. what a night for election workers, wisconsin's certainly living up to its name as a battleground state, this morning this race also remains too close to call, joe biden and president trump literally battling it out for the 10 electoral votes here, the big delay the avalanche of mail-in and absentee ballots, something that folks have never seen here, 60% of the folks in this area chose not to come in person, mostly because there's a raging coronavirus epidemic here so it put a lot of pressure on these workers here. state election officials say they took great pains to make sure they handled these ballots

carefully, even they're going to triple-check the results. one of the problem is, election workers weren't allowed to start counting those ballots until 7:00 a.m. yesterday, so they were up against it to deliver them in timely fashion. by night fall this race was supertight. the state trump claimed four years ago, now biden seems to be leading by that same amount. biden a little closer to winning here. but still very, very close, it looks like it will be by the thinnest of margins here in wisconsin, election officials are going to talk about this a little bit later this morning. we may have a little bit more clarity. but at this point, still very, very tight here in wisconsin. michael? >> thanks very much. let's bring in rahm emanuel and chris christie. rahm, let me begin with you, so far we haven't projected

arizona, so far both sides have held the states they held in 2016. a re-run so far of 2016. you've been in touch with biden campaign, where they are confident in the remaining states? >> the best way to frame it, you have one election result but two elections, same-day vote election, the results skew all across the country towards trump and then you have the absentee and the mail-in ballots they skew for joe biden. when those votes started to count, joe biden moved ahead. you have two separate elections and depending on where you are in each state, which votes you're counting, in pennsylvania they believe if you look at the numbers as the absentee and the mail-in ballots come in, biden is winning by 80%. that's exactly how you have to

count it. >> chris, around midnight, the aides were confident of how the president could do in pennsylvania and michigan and some other states like georgia and north carolina yet the president still came out there around 2:00 and called for stopping the count. will he follow on that? >> you can't tell at this point. it depends on how everything shakes out with these vote counts. there's still a belief they have a chance in arizona and nevada. they're winning in georgia. they're winning in north carolina. they're winning in pennsylvania. they're winning in michigan right now. so if you're the white house, my view would be, let's get the votes counted. see where all this lands, because right now, based upon the states where you're winning you'll win the election if you can maintain those leads. now what rahm said is ri

too. right now if you're the president you're winning in those states, you know, my view is let's get the votes counted and if i can maintain those leads i'm re-lengt zbld one story of this election both sides got their votes out. a record turnout. >> both sides got their vote turnout. the one takeaway, george, the polling was wrong, wrong again, even worse than in 2016, i do think they -- the biden campaign ran a great ground game. trump turned out a vote that anybody saw in any baseline was there that there was more trump voters that didn't vote in 2016 and i think by sheer force of will made him show up and you can see that by the tightness of this race. >> we'll stray on this all morning long. right now, so many eyes --

>> polling was awful. >> no question about that. >> we're watching pennsylvania. we'll be talking to the attorney general. the latest on the technical glitches. georgia's secretary of state will join us live. first, let's check in with ginger. good morning, ginger. most models trying to bring it back into the care bee yen. potentially impacting south florida. >> let's get the sunny cities sponsored by prudential.

good wednesday morning. i'm mike nicco. more sunshine today and an uptick in temperatures by a couple degrees. chance of showers and thunderstorms friday and sunday and it comes with blustery cool conditions. today 70s to near 80 away from the coast. and tonight 40s and 50s with clouds and fog in the same areas. the 7 day forecast, biggest change from thursday to friday, we're live on the west coast. one of the scenarios that we were talking about yesterday morning, the red mirage and the blue mirage. >> playing out in the upper midwest right now, what you saw last night as the night began and the first votes came in the day of voting in states like michigan and wisconsin the donald trump jumped out to a

huge lead and hours where he continued to hold that lead but that's because the early votes still wasn't being counted. especially in michigan and wisconsin. it started to be counted somewhat after midnight and as the hours rolled by, joe biden picked up on donald trump and actually took the lead in michigan and wisconsin. one of the ironies remember four years ago, donald trump won wisconsin and michigan quite narrowly, right now joe biden is leading by about the same margins in michigan and wisconsin as donald trump won just by four years ago. arizona right now looks like the only state so far that will flip from four years ago. >> such similarities to 2016. much more on the state of the race when we come back. stay with us. ♪ breeze drifting on by you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ it's a new dawn...

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to drive the whole day long. goldfish crackers. the snack that smiles back. ♪ welcome back to "gma." we're live for our viewers on the west coast. as you have that first cup of coffee, millions of votes are still being counted across the country right now on this very busy wednesday morning after election night. >> they're very counted in all of the key states right now. starting with the state of michigan, 16 electoral votes in play, joe biden has now pulled into a narrow lead, about 10,000 votes, over donald trump in state of michigan, about what donald trump won michigan four years ago. in wisconsin, as more votes were counted, joe biden has pulled ahead of donald trump there as well. again, that's about the margin that donald trump had over joe

biden four years ago, now you're seeing joe biden with about 20,000-vote lead in the state of wisconsin and pennsylvania, still a lot of votes out there. donald trump still has a big lead there right now, but there are about a million votes left to be counted in the state of pennsylvania and we're expecting to hear from the administration, the governor tom wolf shortly this morning, as the vote is being counted. right now, i want to go to my conversation with attorney general josh sha ppiro. tell us where things are with the count right now. >> yeah, look, george, i get it. folks want to know. my kids jumped on me this morning, daddy, daddy, who won and -- >> my kids jumped on me too. >> we've been saying for months, you know, we're going to secure, protect and count every vote so

we secured the vote. we protected it and now it's being counted all across pennsylvania, clerks from our communities are making sure that these ballots are counted. there's still a lot of vote left. it is just way too early in the process. i anticipate throughout the day today you're going to see significant numbers of votes being put into the system, so the public will be able to see those numbers change and rise and go up and down. the bottom line is, we're going to make sure here in pennsylvania that we respect the will of the people. we're going to get an accurate count. it's the law. the law says count every eligible vote and that's what's happening all across pennsylvania right now. >> you heard the president early this morning threaten to go to the supreme court to stop the counting. >> yeah, look, it doesn't work that way, george. you know, the president doesn't count these votes. the clerks in our communities count these votes. you know, these issues, the legal issues have largely been settled, and now it is time to count these votes and make sure

that the will of the people is heard and so we're not going to let anything interfere with that process. we just need to have a little bit more patience. maybe a little more patience than my kids and your kids have and we have to make sure every eligible vote is counted. >> the supreme court said any ballots postmarked by election day could be counted up till friday but the supreme court could still invalidate that in later rulings and the challenges are out there. >> well, you know, george, the supreme court of pennsylvania looked at that question and determined that ballots that were postmarked by election day and received up until friday at 5:00 p.m. were valid and could be counted. on two separate occasions petitioners asked the united states supreme court to step in and overturn that or stop that, invalidate it, and on two separate occasions they didn't do that. there is a legal principle, i

don't mean to nerd out on know as the purcell principles saying matters of election law should be left to the states. federal courts shouldn't meddle in that. two separate occasions they didn't step in. the state that is she's battles should be counted and counties are full steam ahead on counting every eligible vote and those are eligible vote. >> could take days but that is okay. we just have to go through the process. thanks for your time this morning. we noef now to georgia, the votes are still being counted there. t.j. holmes joins us now with an update from atlanta. good morning. >> good morning. the battle is still well under way in this battleground state of georgia, a state that's seen some voting day problems in recent history, yesterday things were as smooth as they could imagine. short lines, the average time to wait in line over much of the state yesterday was two, three minutes, but as the day got

later, night came, a few problems popped up here and there, one in particular happened in fulton county, the most populous county in this state, i'm going to stop there and i'm going to head back over to you, george. we're going to pause now for a special report so the rest of the >> announcer: this is an abc news election update. now reporting chief anchor george stephanopoulos. good morning. welcome back to our special coverage of election 2020. votes still being counted in all key states right now. pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin. we're breaking in because we're about to hear a press conference for the state of pennsylvania where the administration of governor tom wolf is expected to speak. >> as i said, counties continue to report results, these results are coming in more slowly, so we have to be patient, but confident that these votes are

going to be counted. they're going to be counted accurately and they will be counted fully. the delay that we're seeing is a sign that the system is working. this is a new system that went into effect with act 77 last year and there are 3 million -- millions of mail-in ballots that are being counted and that takes longer than the way we used to do it with the standard in-person voting. we may not know the results today. the most important thing is is that we have accurate results. make no mistake, our democracy is being tested in this election. this is a stress test of the ideals upon which this country was founded. and the basic rule of one person, one vote, that still carries. our democracy has withstood challenges before and for over

200 years we have upheld and strengthen our commitment to basic fairness and due process. i have full faith that we'll similarly meet this moment and i will do everything within my power to ensure that the results are fair, and that every vote is counted. pennsylvania will have a fair election. that election will be free of outside influences. i will vigorously and we all vigorously defend against any attempt to attack that vote in pennsylvania. and every pennsylvanian, every pennsylvanian can have confidence in the outcome of this election due to the diligence of the county election officials and the hard work of the secretary and her folks at the pennsylvania department of state. so thank you again to all pennsylvanians who voted, rest assured your vote will be counted if it hasn't already been counted. your vote will make a difference in this election.

this is the way we elect our officials. this is a way we hire the people with who are public servants. a promise that we give to all pennsylvanians, all americans that their vote counts and i indeed to keep that promise here in pennsylvania. i'm proud to turn this over to secretary of state kathy boockvar. good morning. so i want to echo some of what governor wolf said about once again thanking all the, you know, tens of thousands, if not hu hundreds of thousands of election workers who were and are still involved in the process of enabling this great democracy in pennsylvania and across the nation. the work they've done and continue to do is just tremendous and, you know, i

still -- we've been talking -- the department of state folks, you know, were at the operations center, i don't know, until 4:00, 4:30 in the morning, went to take a shower and back within a couple of hours of that, working around the clock as are many of the counties and we've been talking about yesterday, again, and how incredibly smooth. it's one of the smoothest, least issues election, president elections than i have seen in any time that i could possibly remember and i have been in and around elections for a long time as a voting rights lawyer and a poll worker, this was incredibly smooth and that's a huge credit to all of the election workers both at the state level and at the local level as well as our state partners, the department of homeland security who made sure all those things people

were worried about, voter intimidation or issues at the polls, couldn't have gone more smoothly in the middle of a global pandemic with all the voting reform changes that we saw from act 77 and act 12. so that's huge kudos to everybody involved. also, we're exactly where we said we would be. we said it would take some time to count the mail ballots and we're approaching 50% of the mail ballots counting which is great, as you know you can go to our election night returns website and the supplemental dashboard to get the greater details on that, but there are still millions of ballots left to be counted, so the counties are working incredibly hard. you'll see a lot of updates in the next couple of hours and throughout the day. we've been, you know, there are a number of counties that made some major additions in the wee hours of the morning. so if you checked kind of early on this morning, you may want to

check again because there's already been more ballots accounted for on our dashboard. again, this is a process, we've got, you know, somewhere -- i don't know what the totals are going to end up at, but somewhere between 2.5 million and 3 million ballots and as i have said many times we had 260,000 -- we'll be at ten times the number of mail ballots and the counties are already approaching 50% done. so i urge everybody to remain patient as governor wolf said, we're going to accurately count every single ballot. the vote count as i have said many times is never done on the day of election night. and the counties are doing this accurately and then accurately as quickly as they possibly can.

military and overseas ballots aren't due until a week after election day, so next tuesday is the deadline for military and overseas voters to cast their ballots and we want to make sure that not only every civil absentee and mail-in voter is counted but also that every man and woman who are serving our country that their votes are counted. so thank you. and we are happy to take questions. >> let's listen to some questions. >> should i stay -- if. >> any questions in. >> where we stand right now and what you know of legal challenges from the trump administration and how are you preparing to deal with those? >> okay. so i think, you know, basically what -- what you know that's been publicly reported that's really all we have at this point. i can't talk about active litigation unfortunately but as things are filed those will be

publicly accessible. >> attorneys who are going to handle that? >> we have a mix -- what we've been doing all along with litigation, we have a mix of in-house and outside counsel. plus, the attorney is also representing us in a number of these things. the attorney a shout-out to the legal team in the department of state who have been really put to work this year and they are amazing, so tim and kat and team, thank you. we also have tremendous teams of outside counsel involved in all of this. as the governor said, we'll make sure that every vote is counted, every eligible voter has the right to cast their vote. >> how many counties are handling ballots coming in tuesday, thursday, friday, how are they handling that? is each county setting aside?

>> you can go online to see our guidance. last night we gave more technical guidance to the counties which we can forward to it, it lays out the process. the late-arriving ballots. everything is going to be segregated. all those ballots will be se gre gated but they will be counted. you can walk through how to segregate those races. >> can you talk about the order in which they'll be counted? a count by county decision? >> they'll get to, basically, it will depends, some counties are done counting their mail-in ballots, they won't be reflected in the website as you see it now, they'll be segregated.

but it will vary county to county. >> i think stay tuned on that. yes. >> on those segregated ballots there were 500,000 ballots that haven't been cast as of yesterday. there were 500,000 mail ballots issued that hadn't been cast as of yesterday, is there a way for the state to determine how many of those 500,000 people chose to vote in person instead, or do we need to operate under the assumption that all 500,000 could come in before friday. >> all that will be trackable but we won't have it today. so basically between provisional ballots and the poll books and the mail-in ballots, you know as you all know, only one vote can be counted for any voter. you'll be able to see all of that. but it will take some time for that data to be quantified.

>> last night, you didn't know how many mail-in ballots had arrived yesterday, do we know how many ballots arrived yesterday? what's the number of mail-in ballots? >> i don't have that with me this morning. check on the dashboard. that will be updated throughout the day. >> keeps raising this point about how ballots that arrive yesterday that can still be counted may not have, you know, a legible postmark on them and raising questions about whether or not they should be counted or not. he said it's because of the pre-pay envelopes becau s the s provided. >> anything that arrived yesterday doesn't matter whether it's postmarked or yesterday. anything that arrived yesterday is a valid vote. so talking about the

late-arriving ballot, so the postmark, first of all, the way we did pre-paid postage in pennsylvania we went to the counties where they are, if it was through their business reply mail, we did it that way. reimburse them for stamps or metered postage -- i don't remember how many. but those are still postmarked. they have timing marks. they're still trackable by date. so it's a tiny fraction of any of those things, whether it's business reply mail or regular mail. we have had that situation where you get a letter and it's not postmarked. it's rare. so for business reply mail. they do a timing mark, it's not accurate. there were all stamped. >> if it's one of those rare occasions would it be counted?

>> under the current pennsylvania supreme court decision, currently the law, yes, as long as they're not affirmative evidence that it was postmarked after november 3rd. >> my understanding the state is showing 18 counties with 0% of mail-in ballots counted. >> so, you know, sometimes counties are uploading on their websites, and haven't transmitted the file to the department of state, because, you know, they have their own local races, i urge -- this is what we're going to be doing throughout the day, go to the county website, it's great way to double-check, but we're going to be following up with all those counties say, hey, make sure you get the files, some of them, you know, this year because we had for the first time we had a website that was going to itemize the mail-in

ballots from the in-person ballots to the provisionals, sometimes it merged the two types into one, they formatted it wrong. so we're working through that to make sure the actual attribution of that is right. it doesn't mean they haven't counted. it may be it's not just uploaded to the department of state's website. >> last thing, i'm sorry, double-back on something, if i heard you correctly, between 2.5 million and 3 million mail-in ballots, if you can speak as much as specificity as possible regarding that. >> the numbers that i gave yesterday it was just under 2.6 million as i recall, i'm not sure what additionally came in. as of yesterday, at some point

it was just under 2.6 million that had been cast. it was 83% or something like that. so we can get back to you again. go on the website and he'll have that information available to you. >> okay. >> yes, can you tell how many mail-in ballots are outstanding by county by county. >> it's on our website. you can click on the supplemental dashboard and you click on that it breaks down, there's tab for mail ballots, breaks it down by cast, how many are remaining, there's a tab for in-person precinct reporting, how many precincts are in each county and how many are fully reported. >> kathy, a question over here.

>> one last question. >> thank you. oh. >> lancaster county, what they're saying if they count anything that you're authorize to segregate they won't be back if there's some ruling, what's your response. >> it's not accurate. we sent an e-mail to the counties yesterday. i think i said this yesterday, we spoke to all of the voting system vendors it's absolutely feasible -- not even challenging -- i mean there are different ways to do it, you can use different machines, you can use different memory sticks, you can absolutely segregate them. we reached out, sent this e-mail to counties advising them to talk to their voting system vendors. >> what if they don't comply? >> we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

i expect them all to comply. thank you. so there you have it, the press conference in the state of pennsylvania by the governor and secretary of state describing the process of counting. i want to bring in eva pilgrim for more on that. one point they emphasized so far at least a remarkably smooth and orderly process. they're going through this as expected. the counting starts at the county level. tell us what more you know about the process and the timing of when we'll learn more about these votes. >> reporter: they've said all along they think they'll have most of those mail-in ballots counted by friday. they reiterated that idea they're on schedule for what they think was going to happen prior to the election going down. it's important to note that the goff kind of set the stage very early in that press conference trying to manage expectations

that we may not know the full result today, that doesn't mean that anything has gone wrong, it's taking more time to count ballots. handball lots take longer to count than when you vote in person. this is the first time they've done early votes. those mail-in ballots in a general election. they're doing this for a first time. a new process for the people here in the state of pennsylvania. 2.5 million and 3 million ballots that have to be counted. about half of those, 50% mark of those mail-in ballots have now been counted, she said they're making sure they separate any ballot that came in after election day, that's really important to note here, these ballots that they're counting right now were ballots in place before the election day was over. any ballots that come in after 8:00 p.m. on election day have been segregated from the rest of

the ballots and in many cases they haven't been able to start counting those, they'll be counted in a different pile just in case there's some sort of legal challenge going forward and the governor saying he really wants to make sure that pennsylvania has a fair election, that every vote counts, that's his mission in this election process, he wants to make sure every person knows their vote matters. some of the people who are volunteering at, they have one machine that cut open the ballots, another machine that scans it, they're working in four-hour shifts, there are 43 people working each shift. this is going to take time. >> no question about that. thanks very much. terry moran, let's talk more about why those ballots are being segregated the ones that come in after today but were

postmarked by yesterday. the reason that's significant, the supreme court so far at least has said that ballots that are postmarked by election day but come in by friday can still be counted. >> reporter: that's right, this is something that pennsylvania did through its state supreme court, the constitution of pennsylvania provides for a very, very full exercise of the vote. and the supreme court of pennsylvania reading that, in this pandemic, since the legislature decided to mail-in pal lots we should provide for extra time at the end of the election for people who may get it in a little bit late. now the republicans have challenged that. they took it to the supreme court of the united states saying, this is judge-made law, it's the state supreme court interpreting the law, but the republicans said it's judge made law, this extension should not be valid. the supreme court deadlocked

before amy coney barrett was on the court. 4-4. no decision. the conservatives say they want to look at this again after the election. what the secretary of state in pennsylvania has wisely done say, any ballots that come in after election day, we'll count them and put them to the side. we believe they're valid. if we lose the case, throw them out. it's a lil complicated. >> is that pile of votes big enough to make a difference in the election? we heard some of the other potential challenges we could see to these ballots suggesting that the postmarks may have been marred on some of the ballots that have been sent in. you couldn't tell it was postmarked by election day. >> that's right, once again the supreme court of pennsylvania reading its own constitution, said if that happens, the goal should to be after firm, count

every vote, that the ballot was postmarked after election day, should assume in good faith of the voter that that vote should count, basically what bedrook america law has been, count the votes, presume they're valid unless you have evidence that there's something nefarious going on. george, there's an effort by the officials in pennsylvania to do two things. one officially and one officially they're trying to reassure the public in pennsylvania and around the country with some degree of transparency, this is a normal process, we've got this. if there was a camera where they're counting votes everywhere. and they're trying to reassure people that this is a proper procedure, transparency. one thing that everyone learned

from the lesson in 2016, be aggressive. step forward and say we're co t counting the votes. they're trying to hold off for the president's trump's determined efforts to stop the validity of the election while he still has a lead. >> we didn't hear governor wolf mention his name. pennsylvania will have a fair election and will defend any attempt to attack that vote. >> reporter: that's right, obviously that's bedrook principle. one other thing that's worth saying, we're seeing these results change and the president likes to say, i was in the lead, and they're taking it from me, that's just a metaphor, all these votes have been cast, it's like uncovering a fossil, nothing has been changed. voters cast their vote and election officials are now finding out what they were. nothing else is being done

today, except counting the votes from election day. but this notion that something is changing in the vote that happened on election day or the days leading up to it is false. what's happening they're counting the votes that are already there. >> terry moran, thanks very much. let me bring in cecilia vega, he's been active on twitter. claiming that his lead is being stolen from him. >> reporter: george, twitter has already just slapped a label, a warning label on some of these tweets coming from the president this morning. calling them misleading. let me back up a second and give you a perspective, this is a must-win for this campaign. won by less than 1% in 2016. they have invested $4 million

there. we also just got off with the phone with the campaign who held a call with reporters, they're expressing confidence with what they're seeing in pennsylvania. they like the map. they're liking the outcome so far in georgia, michigan, nevada and campaign officials are echoing these unfounded claims from the president that these votes are being cast what they're saying illegally, even though there's absolutely zero evidence of that happening anywhere. these are ballots that have been cast, that are legally required and entitled as american citizens to have their votes counted. i was struck by something by the officials in pennsylvania said, they haven't hit the deadline for military and overseas residents to have their ballots counted, those are among the ballots that apparently the president would like to stop

counting. he's repeatedly spreading these falsehoods and really about undermining the integrity of our election over and over and over again. >> it does lead to an obvious question, if they're so confident the counts are going to go their way, why is the president complaining about the fact that votes? >> you have a bit of juxtaposition there. republican leadership here in washington have to be answering some questions this morning about where they stand on this and whether they believe as the president has said that these votes counts should stop, counted illegally, we have heard from a handful of republicans like senator marco rubio, your vote counts, if you cast it it counts. quickly to what we heard there from officials in pennsylvania, they're saying this is the smoothest election that they could remember in recent memory, they saw no voter intimidation,

no issues at the polls. they're painting a picture of a reality that's the exact opposite of what the president of the united states is trying to paint inside this white house behind me. let's go to mary bruce with the biden campaign. top brass with the biden campaign have been out with a zoom press conference this morning. tell us what they said. >> reporter: george, we have heard the most decollar tif statements his campaign manager saying joe biden is on track to win this election and he will be the next president of the united states, they're feeling extre extremely confident this morning. a fore gone con cushion, by this afternoon, biden will have a lead that puts him over that essential 270 number, they believe they're going to win based on what they're seeing in these key states. they think they're going to win michigan, wisconsin, nevada. they already believe they won arizona. they're keeping a close eye on

georgia a and north carolina, those races that are still too close to call. george, they continue to slam the president for falsely claiming he has won this race and they also pointed out that if the president got his way if they stopped counting ballots right now, his team notice that former vice president biden would be the winner. the legal team is ready to go. they'll defend this race to the very end. it's up to the american people and they have the right for their vote to be counted. >> former vice president biden is leading in the popular vote and the elect ral college right now. that's clear among the states that had been projected. any more detail, they expect to see more clear results in michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania this afternoon? did they give any more detail on how they expect those votes to

come in? >> they feel so confident, most of the outstanding ballots in some of these states are from democratic-leading areas. when it's added up, it will overcome the margin that the president has. they say when you look at where that outstanding vote is coming from it gives them such confidence. and to the point that you were just making, you know, the president would may have an interest in having some of these ballots counted given where we stand in the total count. we continue to watch closely from when we may hear from the former vice president. last night when he spoke it was notably brief. he stopped short of declaring victory. >> okay, mary bruce, thanks very much. let's bring in matthew dowd for more on this right now.

as we look at the entire map, joe biden leading the electoral college, leading in the popular vote, so far at least the states we officially projected it's basically a repeat of 2016, the only state out there outstanding right now it looks like it will flip according to votes we have right now, arizona, going from red to blue. joe biden has pulled into the lead by about the margins that donald trump had over hillary clinton four years ago. >> yeah, it's a repeat mirrored version of 2016 with a couple of minor exceptions, i think and i've looked at the numbers, michigan and wisconsin, and these states, i think joe biden's lead is only going to build, all of the outstanding votes in michigan for sure, it's going to probably pad his lead by thousands and thousands in

there. the outstanding votes in nevada as far as i can tell are more democratic from clark county. so i think this puts joe biden in the position you want, i remember from george w. bush in 2000, what you want is the lead as you go into this process. joe biden will have a margin at or bigger than what donald trump had in those two states, wisconsin and michigan, in 2016. he's in the driver's seat as far as public perception on this. and vote totals right now. >> as you said, you were working for george w. bush in 2000, he had that month-long recount in the state of florida. now we face a situation potentially in multiple states, close to a recount margin, there could be challenges that lead to recount and challenges to the recounts, give us a sense of what's going on inside both campaigns now as they look at

these states and prepare for the legal battles ahead? >> so, my guess is in biden campaign, joe biden will let his lawyers and let his operatives lead it right now and stand back from this. that's what george w. bush did and didn't say much throughout the entire process. keep in mind in 2000, george w. bush when the counting was finished he had a lead in florida of a little over 500 votes when the counting was done. a fight over hanging chad and all that in florida. on donald trump's standpoint in this, you would normally have him stand back, let his lawyers and his campaign operatives, i don't think that donald trump can do that, he's just not viscerally prepared to do that, i think it puts him at a disadvantage similar to what al

gore faced, actually it's -- for all those folks and friends who went through 2000 with me it's going to be a little bit of a roller coaster ride for both sides but i think it's much cleaner process than it was in 2000, much, much cleaner process, we're not talking about 100 votes, 200 votes, we're talking about thousands of vets. the question is, does donald trump accept the counts? my guess is he won't initially, maybe his lawyers will talk to him. >> let me bring in chris coons, senator from connecticut, close adviser to joe biden. what are you seeing right now in the outstanding votes? >> i'm very optimistic given where we are today, the

significant movement we've seen in our direction in wisconsin and in michigan. look, george, as you know, we had record turnout both before election day with in-person voting early voting and in mail-in ballots, over 100 million and on election day, election day is when the counting starts. it was outrageous for the president to declare victory last night. when every vote is counted i'm confident that joe biden and kamala harris will be on their way of being the next president and vice president of the united states. >> there are going to be legal challenges to the votes in pennsylvania, ballots in pennsylvania that may come in after election day even those that were postmarked before, you could be within the recount margins in states like nevada, perhaps in wisconsin, perhaps in georgia, talk to us about how you're prepared for these legal battles, what kind of team have you assembled? >> there's a lot of legal

resources available to the campaign and they've got great leadership in that area, let's not get ahead of us yet, we're not done counting every ballot. what matters is what kind of lead to come into that situation with, i'm optimistic when all the states currently unresolved and get counted, we'll have a significant enough lead both in enough states and by enough votes that we actually won't face recount challenges that could overturn your vote. >> you're right next door to pennsylvania, in connecticut, what's your sense of where that state is? are there still enough votes out there for you to make up the difference there in pennsylvania. >> yes, there are. i've been texting and talking this morning with colleagues both statewide election officials, campaign consultants, my colleague bob casey and given what i'm hearing about the

margins how confident they are about the outstanding votes and where they may go once counted, i'm very optimistic, we may not only end up with michigan and wisconsin but also pennsylvania in the win column, but we have to wait, it may be several days as we know until vote is counted. >> how is the vice president faring through this? >> joe biden, one thing american people, he's been knocked down by life twice and he's gotten twice. that's how he's connected with americans. we always knew that this was going to be a hard-fought election and he's optimistic, he's someone who has done everything he possibly could. given the numbers right now, i'd much rather be in biden's

position than president's position. he can help bring us together in this exceptionally divided nation. >> we'll hear from him today? >> i don't know that for sure, george, but given the developments i'm hopeful. >> senator coons, thanks very much for your time. let's go michigan, juju chang is there for us. the counting is continuing. joe biden pulled into the lead. what we expect throughout the day. >> reporter: about two hours ago, joe biden squeaked ahead of president trump by that 10,000 margin which ironically the margin of victory for president trump in this battleground state. but joe biden's lead will only grow as the hours of today click away because the secretary of state still has 10% of the

overall vote still outstanding, so that's talking about 5 million votes, 10% of which that haven't been counted, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of votes, many coming from the democrat iic juggernau of county that are going to lead toward democrats. what was going on in the polling sites yesterday, not only was there bipartisan poll observers watching the tallying but the reason why this is ticking on for hours and hours is that there are bipartisan pairs of poll volunteers who are processing these ballots, they work together, one republican, one democrat presumably, one person opens the envelope by hand, the other person verifies it. the person checks against the i.d., the other person sees the

vote and and only then it's tabulated. the mood inside the polls that we saw reflected time and time again by the poll workers that we spoke to outside was that, there were no conflicts, there were no accusations of voter suppression, there was very little that was disturbing to people which is in stark contrast to the questions and the doubt that was sowed by president trump's speech. we have hours to go. the secretary of state says they'll have a clearer picture by the end of today. but they are not giving any guarantees when this process is going to be over. there are literally hundreds of thousands of votes. >> these are bipartisan groups. democrats and republicans working together to count the votes in the state of michigan, an especially important right now during the pandemic, these

poll workers are on the front lines of the pandemic in the way many healthcare workers are as well. one of the big stories of november 3rd, the first part of this election process is how smoothly that process went in michigan and across the country. >> absolutely, george, not only that, but the poll workers were working together and then there were bipartisan poll observers there as challengers to make sure everything was going smoothly, making sure there was no voter intimidation or voter suppression, by all accounts and the people we spoke to up and down the chain, yesterday was a very smooth sailing operation. >> juju, you've done a lot of reporting from michigan throughout the summer it's been a tense time in the state of michigan, great consternation over the lockdown the governor was a -- in a kidnapping plot.

>> george, you know, you spoke to governor whitmer as i did about those threats and they were very concerned, they reached out to the white house, governor told me to try and turn down the temperature, you would recall there were armed protesters in that capitol right behind me and the alleged kidnapping plot that the fbi broke up just weeks before the election and a tremendous amount of concern, i spoke to militia members here in michigan and they disavowed themselves from the extremist groups that were expe suspected in this plot. they said we just want to express ourselves and express our first and second amendment rights, but there was a lot of tension and a potential for a great deal of conflict and thankfully, george, we didn't see any of that materialize. i want to go to tom llamas. the various paths to 270 for

both candidates. let's pull up that map right there and for the sake of this exercise a good sense of where this could go, walk through the path for joe biden if he holds on to the leads he has now in arizona, nevada and wisconsin. >> a remindso arizona where joe has a lead, wisconsin where he has a lead, michigan very slim lead, look at that, he hits 270 if he's able to win michigan f he takes pennsylvania, same story, 274. if he wins georgia, 290, he has several paths if he wins nevada and arizona. >> so that's right. he has several paths assuming he holds on to those states in the southwest, if those states go to former vice president biden it puts tremendous pressure on the trump campaign. >> it does, because it gets more

and more narrow. if he wins michigan, president trump's number 232. he has to win and pennsylvania, he h he's at 274. the math gets harder for him. in states like nevada right now, we're talking about 9,000 votes, some of these states it's still very, very close. >> that's where the recounts could come in and right now at least president trump is leading in georgia, he's leading in north carolina, he's leading in pennsylvania even though there's a lot of vote to come out but he's behind in those other states. >> that's true. we've been talking so much about pennsylvania here i think george we need to break it down at a very, very simple level, this is just simple math, right now the spread is about 550,000 votes that's the lead president trump has right now, from what we know there's at least 1.5 million votes still outstanding that haven't been counted yet so far,

you say, listen, maybe those are president trump voters, the only problem is, when we go back out and we look at this here, this part right here, we had some of the early vote in pennsylvania, we know what the trend line could be, look at this spread, this is the early vote, 78% to 21%. president trump in his hearts of hearts think it's not fair. he's looking at the numbers and the the map he's thinking he's going to lose the state. michael, you've been cautioning us for several months now that what we're seeing play out in these states across the country was very likely in this pandemic era, cautioning viewers it could take some time this year, doesn't mean this process is broken. >> that's right, george, it

would be very hard to run an election during a pandemic and as your earlier con rer sags showed, it went very smoothly with record turnout all over the country. we also knew that having so many ballots cast by mail were going to take longer to count. especially if it came down to pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin, and of course that's pretty significant right now, it's worth noting that the legislatures in those states refused to change the law to start counting earlier. but it's really -- you know, in a way -- >> let me stop you before you move on to that point. had these legislators been processing those votes as they were coming in as they were doing in the state of florida, we could very well have final results in those states this morning. >> yes, in those states they

couldn't start looking at the ballots, looking at the envelopes until around election day. >> so, talk now about what we should expect in a legal challenge going forward in these key states, which states are most likely to face recounts and what kind of challenges could be raised to stop the counting or try to disqualify ballots. >> well, in wisconsin, if the tally is close enough, within 1%, then a campaign can ask for a recount, it has to pay for it. there was a recount in 2016. they've done that before and that kind of tends to unfold with high stakes. in pennsylvania, where as you know so many votes have not been counted the trump campaign has brought a flurry of lawsuits and the lawsuits they've brought

have been swatted down in the courts. they're citing bush v gore and other cases. so the real question is, are these lawsuits likely to either determine pennsylvania's ultimate result or the country's ultimate result? i think that's unlikely. >> so much depends on the margin. >> president trump is focusing on pennsylvania. >> it could go to the supreme court, in cases that have made it to the supreme court before election day it seemed like the court was trying to walk a very fine line coming down on some restrictions in some states, inval invalidating them in others. >> the supreme court likes to have a general rule of thumb, think don't want to make changes. now of course the election is over, and there was a case where

one of the justices seemed to be inviting them to come back. but that was a case where the supreme court twice declined to make a change before the election. >> and at this point, it does appear from everything we've known about chief justice roberts and his history, this is notes inially a fight he would be eager to jump into for the sake of the court. >> he's been very skilled at steering the supreme court through the partisan turmoil and choppy waters in recent years, he's an institutionalist as they would say, he would not be deciding the results of the presidential election. however he may not necessarily have as much control over the votes on the supreme court as he did a year ago because of the changing makeup of the court, but i just don't think -- it would be such an upending of the elections and election laws in

all 50 states for the supreme court to make some kind of ruling just to deal with votes in pennsylvania. when they make it ruling it just doesn't apply to pennsylvania. >> that's the final ruling. looking back at 2000, individual members of the supreme court can be petitioned for stays or to stop the counting temporarily, that's pretty much what happened in 2000, justice scalia on his own, stop the count in florida the weekend before the final decisions were made. >> well, the way things go to the supreme court, you're right, they go to one justice, pretty quickly they refer it to everybody else, we're only a day after election day, we're not close to the deadlines and, you know, time nervousness that you had in florida in 2000. this should unfold fairly smoothly over the next few days

and, you know, we knew that pennsylvania because of all of the outstanding ballots cast by mail, whatever closeness there is in the race it would just take a few days to figure out what the margins are. >> we are on something of a clock at this point. the electoral college is set to meet on december 14th and there's a date before that, december 8th, the so-called safe harbor provision kicks in about the time the states have to certify which electors they'll be sending. >> that's right. there are these deadlines and rules and they're pretty clear what they are, but they're also pretty far off in the distance as of right now. again, pretty unlikely that the litigation would jam up the gears so much that we wouldn't know who won. one of the questions with these

lawsuits, how many of the votes are even involved in florida in 2000 as you know it came down to a few hundred votes statewide so any slight move in any direction could determine the results. not at all clear that's the case here. i'm not expecting pennsylvania to be decided by judges. the people basically have decided. we're just trying to find out what they decided. >> michael, thank you very much. let me go back to matthew dowd for more on this. everything michael was just saying hold true in everything we've seen in previous elections with previous presidents, you go back to 2000, al gore once the supreme court gave their decision gave his concession speech. president trump pushes the

envelope on norms across his presidency. >> it's important for the viewers to understand this isn't a florida 2000 situation yet. this is a -- florida 2000 occurred after the count was complete before they were certifying because all of these different ballots. a count had taken place, a statewide had taken place. when you look at this, wisconsin to me is something we should highlight. al gore in 2000 won wisconsin by 5,000 votes. john kerry in 2004 when wisconsin by 11,000 votes. all of it went fine. all of it was certified. those are much closer margins than we're looking right now in wisconsin and michigan. those margins i think are going to grow. i think the question for donald trump even though he has busted

norms and traditions and all that, when the counts are complete, and those margins are in the thousands and thousands of numbers of voters, he has to ask himself, what is it he's going to ask for? he can pay for a recount. he has to allege some level of fraud. george, in wisconsin and michigan, all of those ballots that they're counting now actually came earlier than election day, so these are not late-arriving ballots that are coming in on election day, all the earlieriest ballots that they haven't counted. i think that's the question for donald trump. he may not concede. but they have to ask themselves what path do they have if they're behind thousands and thousands of votes in the states that make up an electoral college victory for joe biden? >> and another question is the

politics behind it right now, when you look separate from the presidential race last night it appears that respects had a pretty good night nationwide, they cut in unexpectedly cut into the majority of the house and maintain control of the senate. one big question out there, if this gets pushed by the president and his team into the courts, how much support will they have among republicans in the house and the senate? >> well that's a huge question in this. you're right the democrats had thought they were going to take the senate, though it's still an open question at this point, we may be in a situation, george, where they're counting ballots and figuring out the presidential race and we're moving into a race to decide the united states senate in georgia, we may have two u.s. senate races in georgia, it's possible to have two u.s. senate races in january before the next president is inaugurated.

and that's going to start happening right now in the midst of a count on the electoral college for president and i think republicans have to ask themselves if they want to try to win those races do they really want to be siding with donald trump in the midst of this? that's tight rope they'll have to walk in the midst of this. it's important. we may have two united states senate elections in georgia who can decide who holds the senate coming not long before the inauguration in january. >> we knew that there was going to be at least one, reverend warnock will be running against incumbent kelly loeffler. p perdue is above 50%. >> george, right now, it's still above 50%. but as we have all talked about that margin is -- the margin in

the presidential race is going to close because of all of the outstanding ballots and simultaneously with the margin closing in the presidential race, the margin and that number that the republican has is going to drop and so as i think what's going to happen as that has changed in the presidential race and we'll see how that changes for joe biden, it will change its number and probably drop believe 50%. >> the secretary of state is holding a news conference. elections matter. we had an election that was a safe, sensible and responsible election for every eligible voter to access. your vote counts. perhaps for the first time we had an election day in georgia where the wait times were below ten minutes across the state and we did that while experiencing record-breaking turnout handling

unprecedented numbers of absentee ballot requests. implementing a new voting system and adapting to the requirements of holding an election during a pandemic and recruiting new poll workers. elections matter. that was a total team effort. first i'd like to thank every early voter who heard our call and voted early, you're the reason why georgia had success. thank you to every election official who meant every struggle and every challenge. in the middle of a pandemic, it was tough and we overcome all the challenges. great job. thank you. your vote counts. as we also pointed out it was counties in georgia that actually administered the elections. dedicated public servants across the state who executed their duty well and in most cases

flawlessly. over 50,000 georgiians stepped guard to man the polls in their communities after many longtime workers had to step out because they were in a population that was vulnerable to covid. our job isn't done yet. i want to thank my department secretary of state for leading a great team, leading in our public service announcements, from in-person voting to early voting. to gabriel sterling who managed the implementation of the state's new voting systems. thank you to ryan germany for protecting our state law. jordan, gabe and ryan, thank you. your tireless professionals who are proud lly georgiians. i'd like to thank my team

throughout the entire year. elections matter. counties make sure that they had access to sites. i'm happy to report that voters have responded favorably to using our new ballot marking devices, they found it easy to use. paper ballot and liked see their ballots tabulated by the scanner. elections matter. completing this general election is a huge hurdle crossed, but it's far from tend of our work. we'll have immediately starting

today working towards certifying this election and then preparing for state and local runoff elections on december 1st and then the september runoff election between senator loe loeffler and rafael warnock. my team has sent reminders to counties to get all of our results counted today. every legal vote will count. i know that many of you probably have some questions. justin? >> what do you say to people who hear the president say -- >> well, i want everyone to know by the sound of my voice that

every legal vote in georgia will count, we have about 200,000 ballots left to be counted. with the absentee ballot process, and there are also about 40,000 to 50,000 early votes that need to be counted. every legal vote will be counted. we're saying that every legal ballot will be counted in georgia because that's our process. >> i hear you say that you want counting to be done today, is that realistic in counties with tens of thousands of outstanding absentee ballots? i don't know if they'll get it done today. have you communicated -- >> we're pushing really hard for that. if we don't get it there, we get the number so small there's no question of who actually the winner is i think that will be helpful will remove questions people may have.

>> we'll get that out as soon as we have that information. >> usps a sweep of their facilities to make sure all of their absentee ballots were delivered, in some places that didn't happen. any concern in georgia? >> we want to make sure that everything gets to us. don't have anything specific on that. that's why we instituted the drop boxes. which was very well received by voters in georgia. >> i don't have any specific. we'll circle back and get that information out to you. >> do you have a breakdown of -- >> well, it's several counties we know that the fulton, forsythe, 7,000 voters, it's

something when you have such a large number of absentee voters and some early votes, it's really multiple counties and we're just knocking those down one at a time. >> so, the state election board gave the counties the authority that they could begin the process of scanning the absentee ballots which is very helpful. in richmond county, they were current with everything they had received but all of a sudden we had additional ballots come in on monday and tuesday. so they had to scan those. and so they'll be getting that as soon as they can. it's a two-page ballot. it just takes longer to get them ready for the scanning process. >> are you able to provide us

with which counties -- >> my numbers here were 52,000 in dekalb, 74,000 fulton absentees and 43,000 early votes in fulton county and i have about 7,000 right now in forsythe. we can get you the entire list because we want to make sure we include all the counties. >> can you walk us through the rest of the election cycle with the military ballots coming in, what's the next part? >> well, the next process obviously will make sure we get all the ballots counted and then also the overseas military ballots, get those in, and have them incorporated into the vote totals. we're going to begin the risk limiting auditing process later this week, this is the first

time we're doing a statewide audit and so what that will give you, first of all, we have a higher confidence of voters, i know there's a lot of information out there, misinformation out there, and some lack of knowledge, we understand that, what the audit will do it will verify results, if there was a race reported 51-49 if we can do the audit we can verify the result. that gives people additional insurance, having that paper ballot, voters were very comfortable. that's a good thing also. then, by friday, november 13th, we then will have the er certificati certification, nothing gets certified until after we do the risk limiting audit. >> well, if there's race that

was within a half percent it's your right as a candidate that's not over the top, we can have a recount. we'll wait until we get every ballot counted. >> it will be actually pull out, running those through and then you're looking at the words that are on the ballot at some point. >> can you explain what you know about -- >> well, if they do -- that's the advantage of having the verifiable paper ballot, you can re-scan that, that's why some of the ballots do kick out and the reason they kick out if they don't fill out the ballot correctly, they put an x or

circle the name that's why we have a panel of a republican and democrat and election official, we have want two to adjudication on each ballot. >> any legal challenges on votes cast before 7:00 yesterday. >> we want to make sure that we follow state law, we'll look at what the state law is. we want to make sure that the law's very clear and we follow the state law and we don't believe that judges should legislation late. >> taking longer than you expected it to take or why? >> it's going much quicker. we're really pleased with the state election board allowing us to scan that. this morning, they opened up

their absentee ballot boxes and that's when they started the process of separating out the absentee ballots, that's a very extensive process, verifying the signature, we have saved days a and days. you'll be waiting a long time, much to many people's con stern nation because we understand it's a close election. we're doing fine and we'll be off everybody's radar and they'll be worried about the states up north. >> it will be added to that total. >> how do we keep -- >> it's a process that we keep on adding that. >> georgia secretary of state right there. talking about the process they're going through of counting the votes right now in the state of georgia. i want to bring in t.j. holmes. t.j., he sounded fairly

confident that they're going to have a full result, not an official result but a full result of the count some time today. >> reporter: part of that has to do is why it's taking so long in a place like pennsylvania, other places like pennsylvania they weren't able to start processing these ahead. georgia here they were allowed to start processing getting things in place, getting the memory cards out from the early voting, getting those stacked up, just put it in a machine, hit a button and get a tally. they can open them up, get them set up, ready to go, put them through a machine today. but let's bottom line what we just heard there, georgia, you know, we've had numbers coming to us all over the place, different counties, different problems. bottom line here is that the state of georgia still has about

250,000 votes that need to be tallie tallied. 250,000. we've been talking so much about fulton county here, the most populous county in the state where thereabout is that's the county that was having the problems, the pipe burst at state farm where they were processing, a four-hour delay, they did keep processing after that delay through the night, but they brought in a bigger team this morning that was supposed to process another 42,000 votes. a major democratic stronghold, where joe biden can make up some ground. right now, donald trump is about 100,000 votes ahead. if joe biden can make up ground there and neighboring dekalb county, if he could make up some ground there, he could close that gap or maybe even get ahead. >> he would have to win by a tremendous amount.

104,000 gap. >> he would have to do that but also the other thing he could get close enough, he could get close enough, george, we just heard there, a half percentage margin that could trigger at least request joe biden could request a recount in the state. where are the rest of them? around the state? so an uphill climb. but that's what we're still waiting on, a good chunk of ballots that are going to tell the story about georgia. is it going to turn blue for only the second time in the past four decades, george. >> what are they thinking on the ground about forcing a runoff with republican senator david perdue. >> we've been tracking that, right now, perdue is still about

50%, getting closer to that 51% mark, and he's been trending pretty much at that number for quite some time, he has to stay above that where they won't have a runoff, but of course that race is too close to call, we could still being hearing georgia for quite some time even if we get a result in the presidential election we still need to wait and focus on georgia for a couple of more months. they'll test this system, this voting system here, george, they've had a mess in voting. give them credit this time around, like he said, 50,000 people here in this state showed up at the polls to work and i was at one of those polling places, they opened up on time, they were energetic, efficient, credit to them for what they were able to do there, keeping those voting times down. yes, we have at least one runoff

that we know is going to happen and getting very, very close to possibly having a second. >> talking about the runoff that we know about reverend warnock, against the incumbent republican senator kelly loeffler. >> reporter: lot of people will remember kelly loeffler, the wealthiest member of the senate, she was appointed to the seat she now has to defend it, run herself, she got into a lot of issues with her basketball team, she's part owner of the atlanta dream the wnba team, she made some comments having to do about the protests, black lives matter, that her own ball players didn't want to play for her. those ball players were very active in supporting reverend warnock and very much so, they wore t-shirts with his name on it. their owner is running, they're

saying things in support of the opponent. loeffler was able to hold off a challenge from representative doug collins. we're now heading to that runoff which is going to be an interesting one. he came out first last night and made his comments. he's ra ee's raring to go. >> t.j. holmes, thanks very much. lieutenant governor john fetterman is going to join us from pennsylvania. give us a sense of where things are standing from your perspective with the count. >> the good news is is that we're going to count every vote. and we are going to let the nation, the world know that whatever result we end up reporting is going to be true, the results are secure and they're going to reflect the democratic will of our voters. so, there isn't going to be any doubt of that. now the timing of course can change.

it will be in the next couple of days. the timing is less important than the underlying the veracity of the results. >> right now, donald trump has about 9% lead over joe biden there in the state of pennsylvania, what's the universal votes. >> approximately 1.3 million mail-in ballots and those tend historically in this election heavily towards democrats and they're coming from areas that are very democratic strong holds like philadelphia, like montgomery county, like chester and allegheny and smaller counties, too, those voters who used mail-in ballots were overwhelming democratic in nature. >> surprising you that pennsylvania is such a dog fight. biden had a five-point lead the

average of state polls coming in, whoever wins it's going to be closer than that. >> yeah, i mean, anyone has to go through my twitter feed, i have been saying for weeks i don't trust the polls, that this is going to be close, i sounded the alarm and emphasize if the president is able to replicate his margins in small county pennsylvania is he going to be increasingly kcompetitive and that's exactly what happened. i'm not the least bit surprised. >> what's your sense of how it's going to turn out in. >> i feel that the mathematical wind is at the back based on the ballots. one thing i would emphasize to your viewers, every vote is going to be counted and a true result. i mean, we're going to follow that law, but at the end of the day, most of the ballots coming

in are going to skew heavily toward democrats at this point. >> these ballots that may come in after election day even though they're postmarked before election day that are being segregated, do you have any sense yet, and it's probably too early to know, what the universal of votes there will be, significant enough to make a difference in the election. >> i would say it's definitely too early and i would also say based on statements the supreme court made during the challenge they opted not to take before justice barrett was seated certainly would create some concern as far as the supreme court ruling, however, with 1.3 million ballots outstanding it may or may not even be particularly relevant. if you step up to the national level if wisconsin continues to break the way it does, michigan continues to break the way it does, nevada continues to break the way it does, and i was

listening to your earlier guest, georgia breaks the way it does, that's 270 and that's ball game for the vice president, so pennsylvania may not ultimately be that deciding state. >> you think he's going to win? >> the presidency? >> yeah. >> yeah, of course. of course. that's not partisan bravado. that's just math and this's just looking at what has to come in and you know, it's been a free election, we had very few issues here in pennsylvania on the ground. no voter intimidation. no fraud. the only case we discovered of voter fraud in pennsylvania was republican in luzerne who tried to vote for his dead mother. this idea that this isn't going to be true count of pennsylvania voters, anything to that contrary is a lie with attached to an agenda of chaos. >> do you think inside your state, we don't know what's going to happen with the

president, do you think inside your state that this count is going to be approached in a bipartisan manner? >> approached in a bipartisan manner? >> yeah. >> hope springs eternal. let's be honest, the only reason we're waiting on this number is because the p.a. gop refused to grant a day to pre-canvas. a republican governor they allowed precounting for weeks. they made us start at 7:00 on election day. that was the earliest and we had unprecedented turnout and unprecedented mail-in ballot because of the pandemic. that's why there's any delay. if you game it to create that kind of dynamic it's disingenuously to claim where are the numbers. where that dynamic was sent many motion by the pennsylvania republican party's refusal to even grant an extra 24 hours.

>> thank you very much fur your time. want to go back to michigan. juju chang as you were watching, the secretary of state of michigan was giving a press conference outlining how they think the count is going to go today in that state. >> reporter: absolutely the secretary of state is just wrapping up that press conference, i want to double-down on what the lieutenant governor was saying out of pennsylvania, here in michigan they're in better shape, the governor here managed to sign into law in october that extra day of processing yesterday, or the day before the election i should say, i lost track of time, and that ten hours of processing which is why the secretary of state here thinks they can have a pretty good unofficial first result by mid-day today. she says we're focused on securely and meticulously counting all the ballots.

she's a voting rights lawyer by professi profession. she also teaches at the law school here and she is a very public servant. she takes voting integrity very seriously. she said this lead that joe biden had opened up 11,000 has now surged to 35,000 votes, that's now triple the amount by which president trump won this state in 2016 and that number is expected to grow because she tells us that there are still 100,000 outstanding votes, absentee votes in very big metro areas, again, detroit, wayne county, very democratic leaning, flint, grand rapids, kalamazoo, all areas where it's going to lean hard towards the democrats even more so because they're absentee votes and they tended to have been filed by democrats

in those areas. the secretary of state says she understands that all eyes of the nation are on michigan right now. she's a publish servant that takes this voting integrity very seriously. she believes the first unofficial tabulation will be available by the end of the day. official results might come in a day or two. >> it could take two or more days to get official results. she believes that joe biden is opening a lead now that can't be overtaken. >> i think that's fair to say. she didn't say it in those words. the way these votes are trending, any model will tell you that that will only continue to open up and the margin, you know, is up for interpretation. i want to go to cecilia vega

at the white house. as more votes are being counted that joe biden is doing better by the hour, what kind of path does the white house see at this point to the 270 electoral votes they're going to need. >> yeah, our team, george, is just getting some really interesting information from their sources. they're saying that sources close to the president believe they still have at least one but a very complicated path for re-election there saying the president could hold

. >> the absolute face of the reality that we just heard the secretary of state laying out saying that there are noic regularities that we have seen so far. the campaign really doubling down on this as well. sending out a fund-raising claiming that democrats are trying to steal the election, fund-raising text that goes out to millions of spotters, that could be perhaps behind the scenes also mounting a legal challenge, george, we're told by sources they're exploring, all options are on the table right now. >> the president active on twitter this morning. do we expect to see him in person. >> we still don't know. if he decides to speak to the american people today. we'll be there as part of that. no word from the white house yet. >> we'll be here all day long. we'll turn to our local stations

for some coverage. but our coverage will continue here on the network as well. as we continue to look at the votes coming in on this 2020 election. and we are back now. let's recap where we are right now. as we come on the air right now, joe biden has 225 electoral votes to 213 for president trump. you see it right there. he's won 19 states along with 23 states won by donald trump. the key battleground states still to be determined but we've seen significant changes overnight in those states, starting with the state of michigan right there. 16 electoral votes. donald trump was leading all through the night up until past 4:00 in the morning, but as the votes have continued to be counted, today joe biden has pulled ahead there in the state of michigan. you see it right there, by 35,000 votes. that's more than triple the amount donald trump won the state of michigan by four years ago. 97% of the eec