The count goes on — with Biden on the cusp of presidency

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Joe Biden was on the cusp of winning the presidency Friday night after he opened up narrow leads over President Donald Trump in critical battleground states.

Biden had leads in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia, putting him in a stronger position to capture the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take the White House. The winner will lead a country facing a historic set of challenges, including the surging pandemic and deep political polarization.

The focus was on Pennsylvania, where Biden led Trump by more than 16,000 votes, and Nevada, where the Democrat led by about 22,000, as Americans spent a third full day after the election without knowing who will lead them for the next four years. The prolonged process added to the anxiety of a nation whose racial and cultural divides were inflamed during the heated campaign.

Biden was at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, as the vote count continued, and aides said he would address the nation in primetime. Trump stayed in the White House and out of sight, as more results trickled in, expanding Biden’s lead in must-win Pennsylvania. In the West Wing, televisions remained tuned to the news amid trappings of normalcy, as reporters lined up for coronavirus tests and outdoor crews worked on the North Lawn on a mild, muggy fall day.

Trump's campaign, meanwhile, was quiet -- a dramatic difference from the day before, when it held a morning conference call projecting confidence and held a flurry of hastily arranged press conferences announcing litigation in key states.

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Trump's wild claims test limits of Republican loyalty

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's wild and unsupported claims of voter fraud have emerged as a high-stakes Republican loyalty test that illustrates the tug of war likely to define the future of the GOP whether he wins or loses the presidency.

There is a pervasive sense among current and former GOP officials that the president's behavior is irresponsible if not dangerous, but a divide has emerged between those influential Republicans willing to call him out publicly and those who aren't.

Driving their calculus is an open acknowledgement that Trump's better-than-expected showing on Election Day ensures that he will remain the Republican Party's most powerful voice for years to come even if he loses.

That stark reality did little to silence the likes of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a second-term Republican who has not ruled out a 2024 White House bid. He described the president's claims as “dangerous” and “embarrassing.”

“If there are legitimate challenges, we have a process, that’s the way it works,” Hogan told The Associated Press. “But to just make accusations of the election being stolen and widespread fraud without providing any evidence, I thought was really bad for our democratic process and it was something I had never seen in my lifetime.”

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2020 Latest: Biden's lead grows in battleground Pennsylvania

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the presidential campaign (all times local):

8:05 p.m.

Democrat Joe Biden's lead over President Donald Trump is growing in battleground Pennsylvania.

By Friday evening, the Democrat held a lead of over 19,500 votes out of more than 6.5 million ballots cast. That's an edge of about 0.29%. State law dictates that a recount must be held if the margin between the two candidates is less than 0.5%.

The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the state.

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EXPLAINER: Why ballot-counting in Nevada is dragging on

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — The pace of vote-counting in Nevada is being criticized for taking too long and it's even become fodder for online jokes. But government officials say they are emphasizing accuracy over speed in a year when processing an unprecedented flood of mail-in ballots under extended deadlines is taking more time.

“We told everyone early on that results would take at least 10 days,” Secretary of State spokeswoman Jennifer A. Russell said in an email.

THE GENESIS

The Legislature passed a bill in August to send all active voters mail-in ballots in hopes of curbing, or at least not fueling, the spread of the coronavirus. Those postmarked by Election Day can be counted if they arrive at election offices within seven days, which is Tuesday. And they continue to come in, though the number arriving each day is expected to dwindle.

“It’s been a different year for us," said Deanna Spikula, registrar of voters in Washoe County, the state’s second-largest county that includes Reno. “The volume is definitely something that we’ve never seen before in the state as far as receiving and processing mail-in ballots.”

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Nations long targeted by US chide Trump’s claims of fraud

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Demands to stop the vote count. Baseless accusations of fraud. Claims that the opposition is trying to “steal” the election.

Across the world, many were scratching their heads Friday – especially in countries that have long been advised by Washington on how to run elections -- wondering if those assertions could truly be coming from the president of the United States, the nation considered one of the world’s most emblematic democracies.

“Who’s the banana republic now?” Colombian daily newspaper Publimetro chided on the front page with a photo of a man in a U.S. flag print mask.

The irony of seeing U.S. Donald Trump cut off by major media networks Thursday as he launched unsubstantiated claims lambasting the U.S. electoral system was not lost on many. The U.S. has long been a vocal critic of strongman tactics around the world. Now, some of those same targets are turning around the finger.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro laughed as the vote dragged on past Tuesday, briefly breaking into the hymn of his nation’s annual beauty contest on state TV, singing, “On a night like to night, any of them could win.”

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EXPLAINER: States still in play and what makes them that way

WASHINGTON (AP) — A handful of states remained in play Friday in the tightly contested U.S. presidential race. The outcome of contests in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada will determine whether Democrat Joe Biden or President Donald Trump wins.

The solidly Republican state of Alaska has also not been called because it is only 50% counted and will not release absentee numbers until Nov. 10. It is not expected to impact the outcome.

The Associated Press reviews the states that will determine the presidency:

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GEORGIA: Outstanding ballots left to be counted and a razor-thin margin

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Evangelicals stick with Trump, see upside even if he loses

WASHINGTON (AP) — The conservative evangelical Christians who helped send Donald Trump to the White House four years ago stuck by him in 2020. But even if Trump doesn’t get a second term, some conservative Christians see reasons to celebrate in this year’s election results.

White evangelical voters made up 23% of the vote nationwide and overwhelmingly favored Trump this fall, with about 8 in 10 backing him, according to AP VoteCast. Their support may not have been enough to re-elect the president — with Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the lead as states continued to count votes Friday — yet evangelicals still took heart in their strong presence at the polls and the GOP’s success in down-ballot races.

“There’s no question that we did our job,” Ralph Reed, the veteran GOP activist who founded the Faith and Freedom Coalition nonprofit, said of his fellow conservative Christians.

Like most fellow evangelicals, Reed left room for the president to eke out a victory even as that path appeared slim Friday. But he also singled out Democrats’ lackluster showing in key congressional races as a positive sign and suggested that religious conservatives might see an opportunity to work with a Biden administration that tacks away from the left.

“Should President Trump come up short … if that’s what ends up happening — other than that, it was a very impressive cycle for voters of faith and for social conservatives in the Republican Party,” Reed said.

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Hiring held last month but signs of caution as virus worsens

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defying fears of another slowdown, U.S. businesses kept hiring at a solid pace in October, yet there are signs they remain cautious about the economy's future as the pandemic worsens.

The Labor Department said Friday that employers added 638,000 jobs and the unemployment rate tumbled a full percentage point to 6.9%, extending what has been a faster recovery than many economists expected in the spring.

But the pace of hiring isn’t robust enough to rapidly soak up the millions of Americans who were thrown out of work by the pandemic recession.

The job gains were little changed from September's 672,000 and less than half August's 1.5 million. Yet the increase was stronger than it appears: It was held down by the loss of about 150,000 temporary Census jobs. Excluding governments at all levels, private businesses added a healthy 906,000 jobs. Hiring has held at that level for three months.

Overall, the latest jobs report suggests the tentative recovery remains intact, for now, and that the economy is continuing to adapt to the pandemic.

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Trump's attacks on mail-in ballots rankle some military vets

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has held himself up as a champion of U.S. troops without rival. Now, with his presidency on the line, he’s casting suspicion on a tool of participatory democracy — the mail-in ballot — that has allowed U.S. military personnel to vote while serving far from home since the War of 1812.

The president has shouted from Twitter to “STOP THE COUNT” and leveled unsubstantiated charges that "surprise ballot dumps" after election night are helping rival Democrat Joe Biden “steal” the election.

All the while, Trump insists that military voters' mail-in ballots must be counted. He even suggested on Friday — without presenting evidence — that some troops' mail-in ballots have gone “missing.”

In his dizzying effort to sow doubt about the integrity of the vote, Trump has been all over the map on mail-in voting. The broadsides have unsettled many veterans and former military brass who saw voting by mail as a tether to their civic duty when serving abroad.

“Officials at all levels including in the Congress need to say to the president ‘Sir, you need to exercise the same patience that the rest of the nation does,'” said retired Navy Adm. Steve Abbot, who later served as deputy homeland security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week

A look at false and misleading claims and videos that followed voting in the Nov. 3 presidential election. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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Video shows Pennsylvania election workers transcribing damaged ballots

CLAIM: A video shows election workers in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, stamping clean ballots as received and then filling them in, which proves that voter fraud is taking place.

THE FACT: The video, taken from the county’s official livestream, shows an election worker transcribing votes from damaged ballots to clean ballots. Social media users are taking footage from livestreams of the vote count to rapidly spread false information about the close race for president in Pennsylvania. One version of the video used to make the false claim received more than 1 million views on Twitter on Friday. The videos were shared prominently by pro-Trump accounts on Facebook and Twitter. “Nothing to see here‼️Ballots stamped as “received” THEN filled in #VoterFraud,” one tweet said. A post on Facebook sharing the video said, “Delaware County, Pennsylvania, looks like the dude in the black shirt is doing more than just ‘counting ballots’ #trump2020.” In the video, an election worker wearing a black shirt and a black mask can be seen sitting at a table as he transcribes ballots. According to Delaware County election officials, the video was cropped to remove the bipartisan observers watching over election workers from 6 feet away, a distance that was agreed upon by the county Election Bureau and the former Republican chairman of the Delaware County Council. When processing ballots, county officials rely on a machine extractor to open the ballots and some ballots become damaged during the process, preventing them from being scanned. In order to count those votes, the man in the video was manually transcribing the votes from the damaged ballots to a clean ballot so they could be properly scanned. The damaged ballots were positioned next to the new ones for election observers to witness, and they were preserved. Delaware County has been allowing Pennsylvania residents to watch the livestream since they first began streaming the vote count on Nov. 3. “Unfortunately, some residents have altered to video and are making false accusations, which baselessly and wrongly attacks the integrity of the election staff and the completely transparent process by which votes are being counted in Delaware County,” the county said in a statement. Posts online shared at least three different videos of Delaware County election workers to suggest that voter fraud was taking place. The AP confirmed the video with county officials who said they were also transcribing ballots and observers were present.