Backers of President Donald Trump ramped up demonstrations on Thursday night against an election they believe was rigged or being stolen, in some cases bringing guns or clashing with counter-protesters as they rallied in battleground states.
In Arizona, one of five U.S. battleground states where votes were still being counted in the too-close-to-call race between Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Trump supporters massed outside the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix.
Some briefly chased a man who held up a sign depicting the president as a Nazi pig behind a stage where right-wing talk-radio host Alex Jones was speaking.
Police intervened and broke up the altercation after the man and his small group of counter-demonstrators were surrounded by Trump activists, according to a Reuters witness. There were no reports of injuries.
“They are trying to steal the election but America knows what happened and it’s fighting back,” Jones told the throng of some 300 people. “1776 is the answer to 1984,” he said, an apparent reference to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the dystopian George Orwell novel.
In Milwaukee, some 50 Trump supporters gathered in front of a city building where votes were being counted, blasting country music, waving flags and carrying signs reading “Recount” and “Rigged”.
Roughly a dozen counter-protesters arrived after an hour, shouting “Black lives matter” and “say their names,” referring to the victims of police brutality. Others threw eggs at the Trump supporters from a passing car.
“My country’s future is what brings me out here tonight,” said Mitchell Landgraf, a 21-year-old construction worker who cast his first vote in a presidential election for Trump. “I’m afraid if it goes one way that this country will go downhill fast.”
Trump’s campaign has called for a recount in Wisconsin, where news organizations have pronounced Biden the winner by a razor-thin margin.
‘COUNT EVERY VOTE’
Protests have been scattered, small and largely peaceful since Americans went to the polls on Tuesday.
Facebook Inc said it had taken down a rapidly growing group the social media site said pro-Trump activists had posted with violent rhetoric calling for “boots on the ground” to protect the integrity of the election.
Biden supporters have adopted the slogan “count every vote,” saying a complete and accurate tabulation in the remaining battleground states would show the former vice president had won the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
Both sides held rallies in Philadelphia on Thursday, where election staffers slowly counted thousands of mail-in ballots that could award Biden or Trump Pennsylvania’s crucial 20 Electoral College votes.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) said about 1,700 ballots had been identified in Pennsylvania at processing facilities during two sweeps Thursday and were being delivered to election officials.
In a court filing early Friday, USPS said 1,076 ballots, had been found at the USPS Philadelphia Processing and Distribution Center. About 300 were found at the Pittsburgh processing center, 266 at a Lehigh Valley facility and others found at other Pennsylvania processing centers.
Ballots must be received by Friday evening in Pennsylvania in order to be counted. The vote for the U.S. president remains extremely close and Pennsylvania is one of the states that remains undecided.
About 500 ballots were also discovered in North Carolina during sweeps, USPS said on Friday.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Thursday had ordered twice daily sweeps at USPS facilities serving states with extended ballot receipt deadlines as votes were still being counted in U.S. election battleground states.
Some states, including Nevada and North Carolina, are counting ballots that are received after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday.
Lawyers said at a court hearing on Thursday that USPS had delivered about 150,000 ballots on Wednesday.
“The vast majority were destined for postmark states and would be delivered on-time under state election law,” USPS said.
Sullivan said the processing centers must perform morning sweeps and then afternoon sweeps “to ensure that any identified local ballots can be delivered that day.”
Sullivan issued a separate order requiring USPS to “coordinate with all local county Boards of Elections in North Carolina or Pennsylvania” in order to deliver all ballots “before 5:00 PM local time in North Carolina or Pennsylvania” on Friday.
Ballots were still being counted by election officials in battleground states after polls closed Tuesday in one of the most unusual elections in U.S. history because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
REUTERS