US Election 2020 Results Updates: Texas Lt Guv offers reward of up to $1 million for 'voter fraud' tips

2020 US election results LATEST Update

Texas Lt Governor offers reward for ‘voter fraud’ tips

As per reports, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick announced that he will pay up to $1 million to incentivize, encourage and reward people to come forward and report voter fraud. In a statement, Patrick urged whistleblowers and tipsters to over their evidence to local law enforcement. “Anyone who provides information that leads to an arrest and final conviction of voter fraud will be paid a minimum of $25,000,” the statement said.  “President Trump’s pursuit of voter fraud is not only essential to determine the outcome of this election, it is essential to maintain our democracy and restore faith in future elections,” he said in the statement.

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Lincoln Project to take on GOP-linked law firms

The Lincoln Project announced plans to launch an advertising campaign against two law firms over their role representing US President Donald Trump and the Republican Party in their voter fraud-related lawsuits, reported news agency AP. On Tuesday, the anti-Trump political action committee run by former Republican insiders also urged people to find employees of Jones Day and Porter Wright Morris & Arthur through their social media accounts and “ask them how they can work for an organization trying to overturn the will of the American people.”

The group suggested it would also pressure clients to drop the firms. By the end of the day, Porter Wright had deleted its Twitter account, which was being inundated with attacks. Jones Day said that it is not representing the president, his campaign “or any affiliated party in any litigation alleging voter fraud,” but the Pennsylvania GOP, in litigation brought by private parties and the state’s Democratic Party.

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Postal worker recants allegations of ballot tampering

The House Oversight Committee has confirmed that the a postal worker completely recanted his allegations of a supervisor tampering with mail-in ballots in Pennslyvania. As per Al Jazeera , Richard Hopkins, a US Postal Service workers had on 6 November, told a right-wing activist website that he had witnessed his supervisor talking about backdating ballots and was later contacted by USPS investigators and also started a GoFundMe page, saying he was willin to testify under oath that ballots had been backdates.

“USPS IG investigators informed Committee staff today that they interviewed Hopkins on Friday, but that Hopkins RECANTED HIS ALLEGATIONS yesterday and did not explain why he signed a false affidavit, the Committee said.

According to the Washington Post, Senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had cited the postal worker’s testimony when he asked the Justice Department to investigate election fraud allegations, and Attorney General William Barr opened that investigation.

BREAKING NEWS: Erie, Pa. #USPS whistleblower completely RECANTED his allegations of a supervisor tampering with mail-in ballots after being questioned by investigators, according to IG.

THREAD:

— Oversight Committee Democrats (@OversightDems) November 10, 2020

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Biden campaigns lawyer dismisses Trump’s legal challenges as theatrics

The Biden campaign’s lawyer is dismissing US President Donald Trump’s legal challenges to Joe Biden’s victory as “theatrics” that are intended “to instill in the minds of some portion of the populace that the election was illegitimate.” Bob Bauer said on  Tuesday on a call with reporters that the Trump campaign is trying to “throw obstacles in the path of the government.” and added that the transition was continuing regardless of any issues playing out in the courts.

“In the meantime,” he says, “there’ll be theater, but it’ll be playing to increasingly light crowds, until it empties out completely and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take their oath of office," said Bauer.

AP

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Pompeo brushes aside results of presidential election

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is brushing aside results of last week’s presidential election showing that President Donald Trump lost his bid for a second term. Pompeo told reporters with a grin on Tuesday that the “transition” to a second Trump term would be “smooth”, but later said the State Department would be prepared no matter who is president on Inauguration Day.

Tongue-in-cheek or not, Pompeo’s remarks implying that Trump might yet be reelected were striking, coming at a tense moment for the nation as Trump refuses to concede to President-elect Joe Biden. Pompeo, America’s top diplomat and fourth-in-line for the presidency, spoke even as world leaders have been congratulating the former vice president.

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Dems clinch House control, but majority likely to shrink

Democrats clinched two more years of controlling the House but with a potentially razor-thin majority, a bittersweet finale to last week’s elections that has left them divided and with scant margin for error for advancing their agenda.

The party on Tuesday nailed down at least 218 seats, according to The Associated Press, and could win a few others when more votes are counted. While that assures command of the 435-member chamber, blindsided Democrats were all but certain to see their current 232-seat majority shrink after an unforeseen surge of Republican voters transformed expected gains of perhaps 15 seats into losses potentially approaching that amount.

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What is Trump challenging?

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.

In Pennsylvania, the campaign has challenged the state Supreme Court ruling allowing election officials to accept mail-in ballots up to three days after the election as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. Trump has also sued over campaign observers allegedly being blocked from witnessing vote tallying in Pennsylvania. And he’s challenged the secretary of state instructing counties that voters whose absentee ballots were rejected could cast a provisional ballot.

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How many people voted this year?

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 Donald 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.

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Election’s validity intact despite Trump claims

The US 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 claimed 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.

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Joe Biden has won the election decisively: Kamala Harris

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has said that Americans have made a clear choice in favour of Joe Biden, who won decisively against incumbent President Donald Trump with more votes than ever cast in the country’s history.

President-elect Biden received more than 76.4 million votes and so far, has 279 of the 538 electoral college votes, according to The New York Times.

Outgoing President Trump received 71.7 million votes and 214 electoral college votes. Counting of votes for 45 electoral college votes are still going on. To win the race for the White House, a candidate needs at least 270 electoral college votes.

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Each vote for Biden states that health care should be a right, not privilege: Kamala Harris

US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris reiterated her stand on the Affordable Care Act, saying that every vote for President-elect Joe Biden in the 2020 elections was a statement that health care should be a right and not a privilege.

“We just held an election, and our country made a clear choice: each vote for Joe Biden was a statement that health care should be a right–not a privilege. And we won that election decisively, with more votes than have ever been cast in American history,” Kamala tweeted.

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President-elect Biden speaks with leaders of France, Germany, Ireland and UK

US President-elect Joe Biden received congratulatory calls from leaders of France, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom, during which in addition to bilateral issues they discussed efforts to address global challenges like COVID-19 together.

Biden conveyed his interest in reinvigorating bilateral and trans-Atlantic ties, including through NATO and the European Union, according to a readout of the call issued by Biden-Harris Transition.

They discussed cooperating on a range of shared interests, such as containing COVID-19 and building global health security; tackling the threat of climate change; strengthening human rights, and laying the foundations for a sustainable global economic recovery.

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US Supreme Court justices appear unlikely to strike down Obamacare

The US Supreme Court justices signaled they are unlikely to strike down the Obamacare healthcare law in a legal challenge brought by Texas and 17 other Republican-governed states and joined by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh indicated skepticism during two hours of arguments in the case toward the stance by the Republican challengers that the entire law must fall if a single key provision, called the individual mandate, is deemed unconstitutional.

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Pompeo promises ‘smooth transition’ to a second Trump term

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised the world a “smooth transition” after US elections but refused to recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, saying Donald Trump will remain in power.

“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo said in an at times testy news conference when asked about contacts with the Biden team.

“The world should have every confidence that the transition necessary to make sure that the State Department is functional today… with the president who is in office on 20 January a minute after noon will be successful,” he said, referring to the date of the presidential inauguration.

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Biden vows to ‘get right to work’ despite Trump resistance

Vowing “to get right to work,” President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday shrugged off President Donald Trump’s fierce refusal to accept the election outcome as “inconsequential,” even as Democrats elsewhere warned that the Republican president’s actions were dangerous.

Raising unsupported claims of voter fraud, Trump has blocked the incoming president from receiving intelligence briefings and withheld federal funding intended to help facilitate the transfer of power. Trump’s resistance, backed by senior Republicans in Washington and across the country, could also prevent background investigations and security clearances for prospective staff and access to federal agencies to discuss transition planning.