The president-elect emphasized how he would handle the pandemic response.
Joe Biden is set to become the 46th president of the United States, capping a tumultuous and tension-filled campaign during a historic pandemic against President Donald Trump. ABC News characterized Joe Biden as the apparent winner of his home state of Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 vote threshold needed to capture the presidency.
The hard-fought battle against the president was set against the backdrop of racial unrest and the coronavirus pandemic and bitter divisions among the electorate.
Trump had falsely declared on election night, when he held a lead in several key states, that he won the contest and alleged without evidence, after the count started to swing the other way, that the election was being stolen from him and that fraud had been committed.
Painting the election as a "battle for the soul of the nation," Biden won on a message of unity over division, compassion over anger, and reality over what he called Trump's "wishful thinking" as the coronavirus pandemic cast a heavy shadow over the campaign.
The 2020 election has shattered voting records with votes totaling 147 million and counting, surpassing the 138 million who voted in 2016.
The vote in Georgia is trickling in little-by-little, county-by-county, with about 24,300 ballots outstanding, with the potential to be counted. Most were overseas/military and provisional ballots
Biden is leading by 4,020 votes and at about 49.4% (2,456,845 votes) to Trump's 49.3% (2,452,825 votes).
-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an order Friday night requiring that all Pennsylvania county boards of election segregate late-arriving mail ballots, which are being challenged by Pennsylvania Republicans.
The order enforces guidance previously issued by Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, which said that "all ballots received by mail after 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 be segregated and kept 'in a secure, safe and sealed container separate from other voted ballots,'" and that "all such ballots, if counted, be counted separately," according to Alito's order.
The justice noted that neither the Republican Party of Pennsylvania nor Boockvar "has been able to verify that all boards are complying with the Secretary’s guidance, which, it is alleged, is not legally binding on them."
The justice said he is going to urge his colleagues to conference on the pending petition and asked that responses be filed no later than 2 p.m. Saturday.
The Supreme Court has twice upheld a three-day extension of the filing deadline for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
On Friday, Pennsylvania Republicans sought an emergency order from the high court mandating that late-arriving ballots not be counted. In it, they claimed that 25 out of 67 Pennsylvania counties haven't indicated whether or not they are abiding by Boockvar's guidance.
-ABC News' Devin Dwyer and Meredith Deliso
A Nevada district court judge denied an emergency injunction request by Nevada GOP groups for Clark County to stop using its signature-verification machines and to give more leeway to ballot-counting observers.
Judge James Gordon said he didn't think the plaintiffs came to the court with "sufficient evidence" to get what is required of the "extraordinary relief of an injunction" that would get him to "dictate how Clark County should do their job."
The injunctive relief directed poll workers to manually check all ballot signatures instead of using the machines. Gordon noted that halting the use of the signature-verification machines, which verify about 30% of signatures on ballots, leaving 70% to be done manually already, would significantly delay results.
"The public interest is not in favor of disrupting the processing and counting of the ballots," he said.
-ABC News' Cheyenne Haslett
In Nevada, Biden's lead has expanded to 22,657 votes following a batch of ballots from Clark County, home to Las Vegas.
Biden has 49.8% of the vote (632,558 votes) to Trump’s 48.0% (609,901 votes).
Nevada has 93% of its expected vote in.
Nevada has six electoral votes to offer.
-ABC News' Meg Cunningham and Kendall Karson
