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must have been stolen
from INAUGURATION 2021
USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
The Nation Reacts
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The fountain in New York’s Washington Square Park becomes a victory party Nov. 7 after news spread that Joe Biden had claimed enough electoral votes to win the presidency. With a record number of absentee ballots cast, vote counting continued for days after the election. STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES
Biden supporters honk horns, embrace and dance in the streets, while Trump backers insist the election must have been stolen
Marco della Cava
USA TODAY
In New York, car horns and shouts of joy permeated the air Nov. 7 as news spread that Joe Biden had won the presidency and Kamala Harris would be his vice president, the first woman and the first person of color in that role.
In downtown Chicago, hundreds gathered across from the Trump International Hotel and Tower, hugging, popping champagne and singing “We are the champions.”
Meanwhile, in Lansing, Michigan, hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump gathered at the state capitol to denounce the election as rigged.
After anxious days filled with uncertainty, legal wrangling, street protests and unfounded claims of widespread vote fraud from the White House, Biden was unofficially declared the nation’s next president as the painstaking counting of votes in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Alaska drew to a close.
Biden’s supporters hoped the outcome would bring renewed efforts toward solving some of the nation’s deepest troubles, including racial injustice, immigration reform, climate change and the
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deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Some Republican voters resolved to give Biden a chance, while others were not ready to say goodbye to the Trump White House.
In the traditionally liberal stronghold of Boulder, Colorado, Marisole Bolanos, 38, listened as a wave of cheers spread among the crowd at a farmer’s market, powered by smartphone alerts. Passing cars honked their horns and people whooped in celebration in a county where Biden took more than 77% of the vote.
“These are tears of joy,” Bolanos said, taking a break from ringing up corn tortillas.
Bolanos said she’s been frustrated at how Trump scapegoated immigrants like herself. She came to the United States as a 4-year-old and has been a U.S. citizen since college.
“I feel like the last four years have given us a lot of division among each other. I hope we can all come together in respect for each other, to respect our differences but be a more respectful United States,” she said. “All that promoting hate and blaming things on immigrants? Ugh. It’s a direct attack on who we are.”
In Washington, D.C., Jerry Hauser, 52, a nonprofit organizer, rushed out with his family to a street corner to celebrate with noisemakers and percussion instruments. He hoped the next four years would bring, “an end to the madness, if nothing else.”
“It will bring progress on all the issues I care about — climate change, immigration, civil rights, health care – but I think more than anything, end the madness,” he said.
Of Harris’ historic election, he added, “It’s a huge day for our country. It’s an amazing thing. It shows who we really are as a people and that we’re better than we’ve been these last four years.”
Trump backers cling to fraud claims
Trump supporters, however, were in disbelief over Biden’s victory.
In Lansing, Michael Elkins, of Westland, Michigan, wore an American flag suit as he joined the protest. He said he suspected election fraud, pointing to a debunked claim that Biden had received 100% of the more than 130,000 votes added when Michigan’s totals were updated.
“If Joe Biden won legitimately, I’m OK with that,” Elkin said. “Election integrity is a cornerstone of society that is crumbling away.”
In Chicago, Lane Kreisl, 39, came out of the gym high on adrenaline and convinced the election was a fraud despite no evidence to support it.
Kreisl, who said he had served one tour in Afghanistan and a double tour in Iraq and now works in construction, said he didn’t vote in 2016 but backed Trump this year. “My biggest thing with
Onrae Lateal and Tashira Halyard of Washington, D.C., embrace amid a crowd celebrating the election result outside the White House on the evening of Nov. 7. JARRAD HENDERSON/USA TODAY
A Trump supporter speaks at a rally in Lansing, Michigan. As the state went to Biden, Republican protesters there called the ballot count fraudulent. ANTRANIK TAVITIAN/DETROIT FREE PRESS
Trump is, he says stuff that maybe is not the most graceful, but he’s been attacked for four years,” he said. “If it is Biden and Harris, I hope they get treated with more respect than this president did.”
Mike Quillen, who owns several restaurants in Sarasota, Florida, said he’s concerned that a shift in the White House will mean higher taxes, more regulations and tougher COVID-19 restrictions on small businesses.
“A lot of the policies the Trump administration has done is to help small business, which is the backbone of the country,” Quillen said. “I’m really afraid of a one-size-fits-all” approach.
In Los Angeles County, Dan Welte, 40, who splits his time between Southern California and New Mexico, said he was disappointed that Trump didn’t win and had lingering concerns about how votes were counted.
“I hope it’s a fair election, and I hope President Biden will rule as a person who makes both sides happy,” said Welte, a sales worker who said he is registered as an independent. “Everyone needs to have their voices heard.”
Voices in the streets
The news came after a tense week that saw Americans on both sides of the political divide take to the streets. In Michigan and Arizona, Trump supporters converged on vote counting centers with signs and chants that demanded the process be stopped. In Washington, D.C., Biden supporters
USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
The Nation Reacts
A woman records the celebration outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were preparing to deliver victory speeches. Biden won the popular vote by 7 million votes and appeared to claim 306 Electoral College votes to Donald Trump’s 232. WILLIAM BRETZGER/WILMINGTON NEWS JOURNAL
staged days of largely peaceful protests near the White House, dancing and setting off fireworks at nearby Black Lives Matter Plaza.
The Electoral College fight — with some states decided by fewer than 50,000 votes — highlighted the deeply divided nature of the nation after four years of Republican and Democratic leaders exchanging accusations of corruption and wrongdoing and less than a year after Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Republican-controlled Senate later acquitted Trump on both impeachment articles.
When the tension finally broke with news of Biden’s win, some took to song.
Sitting outside a crepe shop in San Francisco, Carol Fleming, 83, burst into tears when she heard the news.
“I’m just so moved, we can have some normalcy again,” she said. She then began singing a rendition of the song “New York, New York.” “Start spreading the news …” she sang.
At a busy intersection in the Astoria neighborhood in New York City, a crowd of roughly several hundred people celebrated, with some holding Biden-Harris signs and a few crying. At one point, a brief chant of “lock him up” broke out.
For Ceasar Barajas, 45, the result was personal. His aunt in El Paso, Texas, had died two weeks earlier from COVID-19, and the Biden voter was hopeful that the next few years will address systemic problems that result in unequal outcomes in health and criminal justice for people of color.
Barajas said the news made him flash back to the first time he was “slammed to the ground” by police. At 14, he was skipping school when three white officers grabbed him. A Navy veteran, he is a first-generation American from Houston. His parents came to the U.S. from Mexico, he said.
“We still have so much work to do,” he said. “But this is the start.”
Molly Rose, 32, a New York City native, heard that the race had been called for Biden as she was in her apartment in Astoria. She grabbed a tambourine and ran out to the street to join the crowd. “I hope for a more progressive country,” she said. “Less racism, more science. I want more equality.”
Biden’s victory felt unifying, she said. “I feel like I’m on the right side of history.”
The United States and its citizens were uniquely tested this election season.
A new civil rights movement sprung up in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police in May. A pandemic that flared in March gathered steam in the fall to render voting even more challenging. And the resulting recession seemed to further galvanize voters.
Those physical and financial pressures conspired to drive voting to record levels, with some 100 million casting votes early and largely by mail to avoid contagion and have their voices heard.
How the map shook out
Going into Election Day, myriad polls had Biden comfortably ahead of Trump in a number of states. But, as in 2016, Trump upset all predictions of an easy win for Democrats.
Biden wound up claiming Rust Belt states that Clinton lost four years ago. Trump took Florida, Texas and Ohio, but he struggled in states such as Arizona, where Latino voters seemingly rejected the president’s stance on immigration and border
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security. Votes also eluded Trump in Georgia, thanks to massive get-out-the-vote mobilization efforts in Black communities, including Atlanta.
By and large, rural counties buttressed Trump while urban areas supported Biden. For example, Iowa went solidly for Trump, 53% to 45%, for example, but a glance at the state’s voting pattern map shows a sea of red counties interrupted by a few pockets of powerful blue around the cities of Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.
Americans remained torn about the results.
In Oregon, Malcolm Menefe, a 28-year-old Portland resident, said he did not vote because, as a Black man, he feels both candidates weren’t doing enough for his community.
Under Trump’s presidency, he said, racial issues “were put on the front page, finally. His actions were called out more.” But he worries that a Biden presidency will be “more of the same, just maybe more under the radar.”
But nationwide, Black voters overwhelmingly picked Biden, securing his White House victory.
Sonna Singleton Gregory, a county commissioner in her fourth term in Clayton County, Georgia, said, “We are ecstatic to see Joe Biden win.”
“We let our voices be heard. This is a big win for Clayton County,” she said.
Clayton is a predominantly black suburb in south Atlanta. It was Clayton voters who erased Trump’s initial lead in Georgia with overwhelming support for Biden.
In Miami, Rocio Velazquez, a 40-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, spent the week terrified that Trump would somehow pull out a win. Velazquez, a legal immigrant in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen, said a Biden presidency will hopefully end — or at least tamp down — the divisiveness that Trump encouraged.
“I love that he’s talking about representing all people, including those who didn’t vote for him,” said Velazquez, who works for a nonprofit that advocates for children’s education and health care. “This gives me hope for a more compassionate country, a more inclusive country.”
Her only regret? That the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult to celebrate.
“I wish we were in a position where we could have a party,” she said.
Mailed ballots flip the results
It was a week of uncertainty. Election night brought hope to Trump’s re-election campaign, as the initial tallies largely reflected in-person voting, which skewed Republican, in part because Trump lobbied so hard against voting by mail. But it was always clear that votes mailed in weeks ago to avoid polling stations would both lean Democratic and take days to count, in part because some elec-
Biden-Harris supporters wait to hear from the winners at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware. JERRY HABRAKEN/WILMINGTON NEWS JOURNAL
tion officials, such as those in Pennsylvania, were not allowed to start counting until Election Day.
As that process unfolded, Trump began to see his lead dwindle slowly in states such as Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania — and he immediately called for the count to stop. His unproven claims of election fraud were condemned by politicians on both sides of the aisle even before the president surfaced two days after the election to give a speech outside the White House laced with unfounded charges of corruption and malfeasance.
“If you count the legal votes I easily win,” Trump told reporters.
Critics decried the president’s speech as an attack on democracy and urged the White House to accept the legal count. “This is getting insane,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., an Air Force veteran who had repeatedly criticized the president for his attacks on the election process.
The big three networks — ABC, NBC and CBS — took the unusual step of breaking away from Trump’s 17-minute talk, cutting to anchors who explained why the president’s claims of election fraud were unfounded.
Ultimately, Biden won by more than 7 million popular votes. More crucially, he won the Electoral College, surpassing the necessary 270 votes by taking Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Even so, Trump continued to claim that he’d been cheated, tweeting, “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!”
In the end, some Americans were ready Saturday to simply move on.
Frank Pelanek, 41, a career firefighter and paramedic from the suburbs of Chicago, was stopped at a stop sign on his way to get coffee when his wife read him the news alert from her phone. He said relief washed over him, as much for the Biden win as for having the election finally called.
“There is nothing Biden can’t fix in one day with writer’s cramp,” he said.
Pelanek is an independent who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. This time, he cast his vote for Biden.
“I’ve come to believe that in a more liberal society, I am still free to be conservative, but in a more conservative society, others are not free to be themselves, and that should not be tolerated,” Pelanek said.
But his nervous state had not completely subsided. With Trump refusing to concede, Pelanek feared violent outbreaks.
In San Diego, Jacqueline Baxter, 35, a stay-athome mom, said she expected Trump to contest the outcome — “He’s probably going to want a recount” — and was worried his most ardent loyalists may not accept the results peacefully.
“I’m not sure how violent it could get,” said Baxter, who supported Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.
Biden backers feel their joy
Biden supporters, meanwhile, moved forward with their celebrations.
In Oak Park, Illinois, public relations professional Chevonne Nash, 38, was putting her 3month-old son down for a nap when she got the news of Biden’s win on her phone. She wanted to “jump up and yell in excitement” but didn’t want to wake her son.
“I walked out of the room, and I was like – oh my God! ” she said. “I don’t think I was ready for the call to be made for some reason, even though it’s been days. I’m surprised. I’m excited. It’s starting to hit me. It’s starting to sink in.”
Nash, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, said she hoped the new administration would restore “dignity” to the office and focus on improving access to health care and the quality of public education.
In Arlington, Virginia, people held Biden-Harris signs and yelled from apartment building balconies as cheers erupted in the streets and cars passed by honking.
J.C. Cheng, 32, stopped outside his apartment building on his way to get groceries to take pictures in his Biden-Harris shirt and mask as people celebrated. Cheng, a Taiwanese-American software engineer who led a coalition group for Asian American Pacific Islanders for Biden, said he was particularly proud to see Asian American turnout rise.
“The anger and the pain that we’ve all felt every time that you got a news notification in the past four years — it’s so much hope that that is coming to an end,” he said. “It was an amazing moment.”
Contributing: Trevor Hughes in Boulder, Colorado; Dennis Wagner in San Diego; Mark Johnson in Lansing, Michigan; Chris Woodyard in Los Angeles; Josh Salman in Sarasota, Florida; N’dea Yancey-Bragg in Arlington, Virginia; Jessica Guynn and Elizabeth Weise in San Francisco; Claire Thornton in Washington; Alan Gomez in Miami; Grace Hauck in Chicago; Lindsay Schnell in Portland, Oregon; Ryan Miller and Kevin McCoy in New York; Hollis Towns in Clayton County, Georgia.
USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
Victory speeches
President-elect Joe Biden delivers his victory address outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, on Nov. 7 after vote counts showed him winning Pennsylvania. That pushed him over the top for the 270 Electoral College votes required for the presidency. JIM LO SCALZO/POOL VIA USA TODAY NETWORK
The message of unity that carried Biden through the campaign emerges again in victory speech as he reaches out to opponents
Joey Garrison, John Fritze, Savannah Behrmann, Courtney Subramanian and Nicholas Wu
USA TODAY
President-elect Joe Biden delivered a celebratory message centered on healing and unity in his first remarks Nov. 7 following a bitter campaign for the presidency.
“America has always been shaped by inflection points, by moments in time we’ve made hard decisions about who we are what we want to be,” Biden said outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, where cheers and the horns of hundreds of cars could be heard between his words. “Folks, we stand at an inflection point.”
His remarks came as Donald Trump continued to contest the results of the cliffhanger election, arguing without evidence that hundreds of thousands of votes were in question. Biden’s address, in addition to setting the tone for his transition and presidency, was a symbol that the Democrat was working to move the nation past the contentiousness of the election, and the previous four years.
“Folks, the people of this nation have spoken,” Biden said, kicking off his 15-minute victory speech. “They’ve delivered a clear victory, a convincing victory, a victory for We the People.”
Calling it a “time to heal in America,” Biden promised to restore a spirit of civility, decency and compromise to the White House. He said it is part of an election “mandate from the American people,” setting a different tone from the tumultuous
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and divisive presidency of Trump.
Biden also made a direct appeal to Trump supporters, some of whom continued to protest outside state capitols and in other locations around the country.
“I understand the disappointment,” Biden said empathetically. “I’ve lost a couple of times myself. But now let’s give each other a chance. It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again.”
He stuck to his campaign’s core message to the end, telling Americans he will seek to “restore the soul of this nation.” He pledged to be a president who “seeks not to divide but unify, who doesn’t see red states and blue states, but only the United States.”
“Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end — here and now,” Biden said. “The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another is not due to some mysterious force beyond our control. It’s a decision. It’s a choice we make. And if we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate.”
Biden spoke hours after he claimed the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. Clinching Pennsylvania put him over the top four days after Election Day as officials in several states continued to count a record volume of mail-in ballots cast during the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden, 78, who will be the oldest president ever, was introduced by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, wearing all white in nod to the suffragist movement. The first woman elected on a presidential ticket, Harris said she wouldn’t be the last.
“Every little girl that’s watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities,” said Harris, who will also become the first Black vice president and the first of South Asian heritage.
“For four years, you marched and organized for equality and justice, for our lives and for our planet,” said Harris, a U.S. senator from California. “And then you voted. And you delivered a clear message. You chose hope and unity, decency and science and, yes, truth.”
She gave a nod to the work that Black women specifically have put into this nation’s democracy. Black voters, particularly Black women, helped pushed Biden’s victory in the primary and onto victory to the White House.
“Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all,” she said, “including the Black women who are often, too often, overlooked but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy.”
Biden and Harris will be sworn in Jan. 20. Their
Supporters wait for Biden and Vice Presidentelect Kamala Harris to speak. Pandemic precautions kept many in their cars even as the speeches took place. ROBERT DEUTSCH/USA TODAY
President-elect Joe Biden
victory set off celebrations by supporters in streets and parks across the country, from Washington and New York to Atlanta and San Francisco.
Trump returned to the White House on the afternoon of Nov. 7 after playing golf, while thousands celebrated Biden’s victory outside.
Biden secured the electoral win one day after the coronavirus pandemic reached an all-time high in daily positive cases and as the economy continued to struggle with high unemployment.
Biden said in his speech that the country cannot “repair the economy, restore our vitality, or relish life’s most precious moment” until the pandemic is under control.
“That plan will be built on a bedrock of science. It will be constructed out of compassion, empathy, and concern,” he said. “I will spare no effort — or commitment — to turn this pandemic around.”
Biden, who spent 36 years representing Delaware in the U.S. Senate and eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, entered the race in 2019 betting that a message of unity would ultimately prevail. He kept that message through a tough primary and the general election.
It was a call for decency and to counter the polarization stoked by Trump, who refused to condemn white nationalists, enacted travel bans targeting immigrants from Muslim nations, promised to build a wall at the Mexican border and denied that systemic racism exists.
“The American story is about the slow yet steady widening of opportunity,” Biden said. “Make no mistake: Too many dreams have been deferred for too long. We must make the promise of the country real for everybody — no matter their race, their ethnicity, their faith, their identity, or their disability.”
For Biden, his election is the pinnacle of a long political career. He ran twice for president before, in the 1988 and 2008 campaigns. Neither of those bids garnered much momentum, but he wound up on the ticket as Obama’s running mate in the second. He thought about running for president four years ago but bowed out after his son, Beau Biden, died from brain cancer in 2015.
This year’s election, the most unusual in recent history given the constraints of the pandemic, remained in doubt for days because of the unprecedented volume of mail-in ballots.
Pennsylvania, with 20 crucial electoral votes, was among states that could not begin processing its 2.6 million absentee ballots until Election Day. It meant initial numbers on election night showed Trump ahead before most of the mail-in ballots –which overwhelmingly favored Biden — could be tallied. Biden surpassed Trump in the vote tally on Nov. 6 and continued to build his lead.
Biden, who will become the nation’s second Catholic president, after John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, concluded his speech by recalling the Catholic hymn “On Eagle’s Wings,” a song he said was important to his family and Beau.
“It captures the faith that sustains me, which I believe sustains America. And I hope I can provide some comfort and solace,” he told the crowd before reciting the hymn. “And he will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn. Make you to shine like the sun and hold you in the palm of his hand.”
“And now, together — on eagle’s wings — we embark on the work that God and history have called upon us to do.”
And with that, Biden’s and Harris’ families, led by spouses Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff, joined them on stage. Fireworks above spelled out the winners’ names as Jackie Wilson’s “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me” played on loud speakers.
USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
Victory Speech
Harris points to the women who made it all possible First speech as VP-elect honors those who won the right to vote
Rebecca Morin
USA TODAY
In her first speech as vice president-elect, Kamala Harris not only invoked the historic nature of her election, but also praised those who came before her and made it all possible.
Harris, who walked out to her signature theme, “Work That” by Mary J. Blige, began her speech by referencing John Lewis, a civil rights icon and longtime congressman who died in 2020, and praising American voters.
“When our very democracy was on the ballot,” Harris said at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, “you ushered in a new day for America.”
Harris is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, making her the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent elected on a presidential ticket. She spoke of her mother, who came to the United States at the age of 19, saying she might not have imagined this moment but that she “believed so deeply in a America where a moment like this is possible.”
“So I’m thinking about her, and about the generations of women, Black women,” Harris said, pausing as the crowd cheered. “Asian, white, Latina, Native American women, who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight.”
Harris highlighted the work that Black women specifically have put into American democracy. Black voters, particularly Black women, helped propel Joe Biden to victory in the Democratic primaries and on to the White House.
She called out “women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all, including the Black women who are often, too often, overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy.”
In an apparent homage to early-20th-century suffragettes, Harris wore a white suit as she talked about the movement that ultimately allowed women to vote — and be on the winning ticket — in this historic election.
Last year, members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus wore all white to the State of the Union address to mark 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the
Kamala Harris
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris speaks at the Chase Center on Nov. 7, 2020, in Wilmington, Delaware. TASOS KATOPODIS GETTY IMAGES
right to vote. Hillary Clinton also wore a white suit during her acceptance speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. And Geraldine Ferraro wore white at the 1984 Democratic National Convention when she accepted the nomination to become the first female candidate for vice president for a major American political party.
Harris honored all women “who have worked to secure and protect the right to vote for over a century, 100 years ago with the 19th amendment, 55 years ago with the Voting Rights Act, and now in 2020 with a new generation of women in our country who cast their ballots and continue the fight for their fundamental right to vote and be heard.”
“Tonight I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision to see what can be unburdened by what has been,” she said. “And I stand on their shoulders.”
