By Meg Wagner, Melissa Mahtani, Melissa Macaya, Fernando Alfonso III, Veronica Rocha and Amanda Wills, CNN
Former Vice President Joe Biden delivered a statement to reporters at the Queen in Wilmington, Delaware. He urged patience as the votes are still being counted.
Biden and running mate Kamala Harris just finished up the second of two briefings, according to reporters traveling with the former vice president.
From CNN's Devan Cole
Ballots continue to be counted in several battleground states, and some of them are receiving extra scrutiny in a process known as ballot adjudication.
Intricacies of the process vary by state and sometimes by county, but it typically involves a small panel of people reviewing a ballot to determine either the voter's intent or whether the ballot can be counted at all based on whether the voter was eligible to cast it.
The adjudication process is underway in a number of the battleground states, including Georgia and North Carolina — where President Trump and Joe Biden are locked in a close race.
The process could be used in the counting of provisional ballots, which are cast when there's a question about a voter's eligibility, or to count ballots that, for example, might have gotten "physically mangled in the process of trying to put them through a scanning machine," according to Rick Hasen, a CNN contributor and election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.
Hasen stressed that the process is routine and is not unusual for this election," but that "we care about it now because of the prospect of a close election."
He also said that although ballots in these states are being adjudicated, it's unlikely that the process will play an outsized role in the overall vote count in those states.
Read the full story here.
The presidential race between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden remains on a razor's edge as election workers in key states continue to count ballots.
Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.
Here's a look at where vote-counting stands in five key states:
Read more here.
Written by CNN's Leinz Vales/ Analysis from David Chalian
President Trump’s lead in Georgia has been “shrinking consistently” since election night, CNN’s David Chalian said as he looked closer at what the President and Joe Biden need to win the Peach State.
“Statewide, Joe Biden would need 63% to 65% of those 48,000 votes that are left to be counted in order to overtake Donald Trump and win Georgia. Donald Trump only needs 34% to 36% of them," Chalian explained.
Currently, Trump has a 12,768-vote lead over the former vice president.
“These votes that are out there to be counted are coming from Democratic powerhouse areas in the suburbs, and it’s the mail vote, which is a Democratic-leaning universe of voters,” Chalian said.
“And so, Joe Biden has been collecting north of 63% to 65% in this last day in Georgia, as votes have been coming in, and if he continues to overperform what he needs here, he can remain quite hopeful that there’s a chance to overtake Donald Trump in Georgia.”
Remember: Sixteen electoral votes are at stake in the state. Both candidates need 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.
Watch:
From CNN's Jason Kurtz
As the remaining votes are being tabulated in Georgia, a state election official says the priority is getting every legal vote counted.
"The effort here is to make sure that everybody's... legal vote is counted properly and that the actual results are inflective of the voters' intent," Gabriel Sterling, Georgia's voting system implementation manager said.
Sterling noted that his is hardly the only state still counting votes. It's simply that Georgia has earned an increasingly bright spotlight as one of the final states yet to have projected a victor.
"The issue we have in Georgia is... it's a close vote," said Sterling. "There's other states that have more votes to count than we do, but it's a wide margin, so nobody cares."
As a result of Covid-19 precautions, Georgia was forced to alter its voting operation, a pivot that sacrificed speed in favor of safety.
"This is the first time we've used paper ballots in this state in 20 years," Sterling stated, adding, "This is going to take a little more time."
In a race this tight, and in a state with ever-increasing importance, Sterling stressed the need for patience, and above all, accuracy.
"These close elections require us to be diligent and make sure we do everything right."
Watch:
Republican Carlos Giménez will win Florida's 26th Congressional District, CNN projects, beating Democratic incumbent Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
From CNN's Kelly Mena and Kate Bolduan
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar says she believes late-arriving mail ballots – which are the subject of ongoing litigation and could be invalidated later by the courts – probably won’t decide the outcome in the state.
The big question: How many of these ballots are there? About 10,000 of them were received on Wednesday across the state, an Allegheny County official told CNN, based on information from the governor’s office. The deadline is tomorrow.
There is an ongoing dispute about late-arriving ballots in the critical battleground state. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court previously ruled that ballots postmarked by Election Day, or with ineligible postmarks, that arrive by Friday should count. The US Supreme Court allowed that ruling to stand after deadlocking 4-4 on two requests from Republicans to intervene.
“From what we’re tracking so far, you know, counties are reporting anywhere from, smaller counties report from zero to some larger counties reported about 500 ballots received the day after Election Day,” Boockvar told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday. “So, you know, that’s not that many really, so unless it is super close, I don’t see them making or breaking this one way or another. In the meantime, we are counting every ballot.”
A source involved with the canvassing in Philadelphia says they estimate there will have 1,000 of these late-arriving mail-in ballots received by the Friday deadline.
These segregated ballots have not been counted there yet. Officials in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, told CNN that they had received around 500 late-arriving ballots since the polls closed.
From CNN's Paul Murphy
US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered the USPS to sweep all processing facilities, twice daily, in states that allow for properly postmarked ballots to count, if they arrive after Election Day.
The sweeps include USPS processing facilities in the critical, and still undecided, battleground states of Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Ballots — postmarked by or on Election Day — can count in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to state law, if they are received on or before Nov. 6. In Nevada, ballots --postmarked by or on Election Day — can count in Nevada, according to state law, if they are received on or before Nov. 10.
The USPS must perform the first sweep in the morning, no later than 10 a.m. local time.
They must also sweep the facility in the mid-to-late afternoon, in time for any local ballots found to be delivered to the local election officials.
During a hearing Thursday, DOJ lawyers indicated that USPS district managers started the morning sweep for the day, before the order came into effect.
USPS must also report the number of ballots found during the sweep, and confirm they were delivered in time to meet the state deadlines.
From CNN's Maureen Chowdhury
About 47,000 ballots are outstanding in Georgia as of 3 p.m. ET, election official Gabriel Sterling said in a press conference Thursday.
Here's the county-by-county breakdown Sterling provided:
Chatham County: 17,157
Clayton County: 6,026
Cobb County: 700
Floyd County: 682
Forsyth County: 4,713
Fulton County: 7,305
Gwinnett County: 4,800
Harris County: 3,641
Lawrence County: 1,797
Taylor County: 456
"We hope to have clarity on the outcome of these elections as soon as possible," Sterling said.