Washington: Forty-eight years to the day after first being elected to the federal government, Joe Biden became the 46th president of the United States on Saturday amid a grueling, five-day vote count.
Electoral College votes had been locked for days between Biden and President Donald Trump. After CNN, NBC News and The New York Times called Pennsylvania in Biden’s favor, he surpassed the threshold to secure presidency — 273 to Trump’s 213.
Biden also leads in the popular vote, with 50.5% of the votes to Trump’s 47.7%.
Those electors all hinge on a handful of states that remained too close to call Saturday morning — Alaska (which has 3 electoral votes), Arizona (11), Georgia (16), North Carolina (15) and Pennsylvania. One elector also has yet to be decided in Maine.
The outcome of the race could come Saturday — Pennsylvania, alone, carries enough electors to potentially reside the race. With 96% of the vote counted there, Biden increased his lead to 28,833 votes as of Saturday morning.
Biden has 3,339,318 votes (49.6%) to Trump’s 3,308,410 (49.1%).
With the addition of about 3,000 votes reported around 11:30 a.m. EST, CNN called Pennsylvania for Biden and projected the Democrat as the winner of the presidential race.
Tens of thousands of ballots in Philadelphia and Allegheny counties were delaying the vote-counting process.
In Philadelphia County, poll workers were counting what they described as “problem child ballots,” those that have issues such as incorrectly placed signatures, or wrong or missing dates, according to CNN.
In Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, officials were reviewing a batch of incorrect ballots sent to residents. Elections officials sent a new, corrected ballot to those same residents, but now they’re evaluating whether those voters submitted the incorrect one, the correct one, both, or voted in person.
