US officials: “No evidence” of fraud in the presidential election results

US officials stressed that there is no evidence of any fraud for ballot papers or the vote counting system in the US elections, at a time when a prominent Democratic member of the Senate accused Republicans refusing to recognize Joe Biden's victory in the poll of "poisoning democracy."

Thursday's assurances came hours after US President Donald Trump re-posted tweets in which he insisted that the vote counting system “delete” 2.7 million votes nationwide in favor of him.

Biden, who leads by more than five million votes in the popular vote, bolstered his victory late Thursday by winning in Arizona, according to US media networks, the first time that the majority of the state's residents voted for Democrats since 1996.

With his victory in Arizona, Biden leads Trump with 290 (compared to 217) votes in the electoral body.

And to reach the White House, you need to win 270 votes.

While most Republicans have yet to refuse to acknowledge Biden’s victory, Senate Democrat Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused them Thursday of "denying reality."

"Instead of working to reunify the country so that we can confront our common enemy, Covid-19, Republicans in Congress are spreading conspiracy theories, denying reality, and poisoning our democracy," he said.

Meanwhile, election officials - both federal and state - in a statement dismissed Trump's talk of fraud, saying that "the November 3rd elections were the safest in American history."

The statement was issued by the "Governmental Elections Infrastructure Coordination Council", a group affiliated with the main Federal Election Security Authority: "The Electronic Security and Infrastructure Security Agency."

"There is no evidence that the voting system deleted, lost votes, changed them, or was undermined in any way," the statement said.

He added, "While we realize that there are many baseless allegations and misinformation about our electoral process, we can confirm that we have the highest confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should be too."

The statement was signed by the heads of the "National Association of State Election Directors" and the "National Association of Ministers of Foreign State Affairs" - the officials who administer elections at the state level - in addition to the head of the "American Election Assistance Committee."

The statement came just hours after Trump re-posted a tweet stating that hundreds of thousands of votes cast in his favor in Pennsylvania and other states had been transferred to Biden, in addition to his talk about the system's "deletion" of 2.7 million votes.

The tweet was part of a series of accusations made by Trump and the Republicans for rejecting the election result.

In this context, Twitter announced Thursday that it has flagged 300,000 tweets related to the US elections to indicate that they involve "potential disinformation," a number equivalent to up to 0.2% of the posts related to the poll.

The site reported that the marks were placed between October 27 and November 11.

Accordingly, it was mentioned that the participation of tweets that carried the mentions decreased by 29%.

The site has tagged about half of Trump's tweets in the days following the election.

Republican lawmakers, like Republican Majority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, sided with Trump in his refusal to concede defeat and support his court case against the outcome.

In turn, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Thursday for Republicans to stop what she described as "the ridiculous circus" and to pay attention to fighting the epidemic.

Some political experts suggest that Republicans are pursuing this strategy, possibly as a way to bolster Trump's popular base ahead of a by-election for the Senate in Georgia that would determine which party will dominate the House.

Meanwhile, 161 former national security officials, some of whom have worked with Trump, have warned that the current administration's continued delay in recognizing Biden's victory poses a "serious national security risk."

The group, which includes former Defense Secretary Chuck Heigl and former Trump National Security Council director Javed Ali, urged Public Services Department official Emily Murphy to recognize Biden as the president-elect.

Unless the General Services Administration recognizes the president-elect, Biden and his team cannot obtain transfer-of-power funding and other resources including access to intelligence briefs.

But Murphy has so far refused to change her position.

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