The outcome of the presidential race may not be known until the end of the week as several critical battleground states need more time to count the high number of mail-in ballots in the election.
Officials in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan warned results are not coming in their states on Tuesday night, adding to the tension that has come with a presidential election like no other.
Wisconsin and Michigan may have results on Wednesday morning but Pennsylvania's results probably won't be known until Friday.
Compounding the problem are lawsuits expected over disputed ballots, which could drag out the results of the election even longer. Republicans have made it clear they will sue when and where they see necessary.
The delayed results were caused by state laws that limited when mail-in ballots could be counted, record voter turnout, and the hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that were received.
In Pennsylvania, state law forbids officials from counting mail-in ballots until Election Day. Additionally, the Supreme Court allowed the state to count ballots for three days after Nov. 3 so long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
In all three states, Republican-led state legislatures successfully opposed changing laws to allow earlier vote counting, contributing to the delay in results.
The three states in question make up the so-called 'blue wall' - an area of the Midwest Democrats won repeatedly until Trump became the first Republican in more than 20 years to win when he took those three states in the 2016 election.
Their results will decide the presidential election.
The three states represent a combined 46 electoral votes, with 16 from Michigan, 20 from Pennsylvania and 10 from Wisconsin. That’s nearly a fifth of the 270 electoral votes needed for a victory.
Also outstanding is Georgia after a water pipe burst at a center in Fulton County, where Atlanta is located, delayed counting ballots in the highly-Democratic area.
The candidates took different approaches to the delay with Biden urging patience and Trump falsely claiming Democrats were trying to steal the election.
More than 92 million Americans requested mail-in ballots, according to the Election Project. Many states expanded that voting option because of the coronavirus.
Most of those ballots were requested by Democratic voters - President Trump urged his supporters to go to the polls on Election Day - meaning a great deal of the uncounted ballots are expected to break for Biden.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
