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Democrat Joe Biden was pushing closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to carry the White House, securing victories in the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowing President Donald Trump’s path. With just a handful of states still up for grabs, Trump tried to press his case in court in some key swing states. It was unclear if any of his campaign’s legal maneuvering over balloting would succeed in shifting the race in his favor. (LeMire, Colvin, Miller and Jaffe, 11/5)

As the Biden camp secured victories in Michigan and Wisconsin critical to its path to victory, attention shifted on Thursday to a handful of states where the result remained too close to call and to the courts, where the Trump campaign filed a barrage of lawsuits challenging the validity of the count. In Arizona, where ballots continued to be tallied even as roughly 150 Trump supporters, some armed, surrounded a facility in Maricopa County to voice support for President Trump as he continued to chip away at former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s lead in the state. After 62,000 votes in Maricopa County were added to the tally early Thursday, Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump in Arizona by 68,400 votes, or less than three percentage points. But Mr. Trump faced a steep uphill battle to close the gap. (11/5)

The United States woke up the morning after Election Day not knowing who will be president for the next four years. It's not unprecedented, and with a slew of mail-in ballots to process, several key states are working to finish counting. ... The Nevada secretary of state's elections division says it will give its next update on results Thursday morning. As of Wednesday evening, the state had completed 75% of its tally, with Biden having a slight edge. (Gringlas and Chappell, 11/4)

Nevada’s potentially pivotal six Electoral College votes remained in limbo on Wednesday night, when elections officials in the state’s two largest counties said they would not add to preliminary presidential voting results until Thursday. Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria told reporters his office was “working feverishly” to process late-arriving mail ballots that could turn the presidential race decisively toward Democrat Joe Biden, who maintained a lead of fewer than 8,000 votes Wednesday. Several media outlets on Wednesday projected Biden was just six electoral votes shy of ending President Donald Trump’s time in the White House. (DeHaven, 11/5)

Dozens of angry supporters of President Donald Trump converged on vote-counting centers in Detroit and Phoenix as the returns went against him Wednesday in the two key states, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete tally of the ballots in the still-undecided election took to the streets in cities across the U.S. (Householder and Sullivan, 11/4)

While much of America was sleeping Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump’s leads in crucial battleground states began slipping — and that’s when online falsehoods about the election started surging. More than 100,000 votes that Democratic nominee Joe Biden picked up in Wisconsin were evidence of “outright corruption,” one Twitter user surmised. The ballots were “MAGICALLY” found, claimed another. In fact, Biden’s early morning comeback in the closely watched Midwestern state was simply the result of absentee and early votes being counted. (Seitz, Klepper and Swenson, 11/5)

Facebook and Twitter struggled Wednesday to contain a deluge of false claims from President Donald Trump and his supporters that Democrats were trying to steal the election — sparking criticism from the left that their labels and fact checks weren't going nearly far enough. Trump has continued to incorrectly insist that he is the winner of Tuesday's vote, even though ballots are still being counted in four critical states and it is still unclear who will emerge the victor. (Overly, 11/4)

Twitter slapped warning labels Wednesday on a pair of tweets by prominent Democrats that prematurely claimed Joe Biden had won a key battleground state and the general election, the first enforcement actions of its policy against such declarations leveled against high profile liberal leaders. Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, claimed in a tweet Wednesday morning that “there's no realistic path for Trump to pull ahead” in the state, citing freshly reported absentee ballots. “Folks: Joe Biden just won Wisconsin,” he added. (Lima, 11/4)

Struggling through one of the most devastating years in the history of the United States, a year of strife and suffering and loss, the nation’s people responded with resolve on the first Tuesday of November. Together but apart, they voted. ... Beyond those who, fearing infection, chose to vote by mail, many who cast a ballot on Election Day experienced firsthand the completeness with which the virus has altered everyday American life. Face masks were, if not mandatory, at least expected, and poll workers sometimes attended to the underpinnings of a democratic government behind transparent protective shields. But the pandemic did not suppress the vote. (Barry, 11/4)

The 300,000 ballots the U.S. Postal Service reported as untraceable are unlikely to affect the outcome of the presidential race in key swing states — even in a worst-case scenario where all are lost — according to a Washington Post analysis. On Tuesday, the U.S. Postal Service notified a federal judge in the District of Columbia that the affected ballots had been scanned in at processing plants across the country but had never received exit scans signifying they’d been delivered to vote counters. (Bogage and INgraham, 11/4)

Former Vice President Joe Biden broke the record for the most number of votes cast for any presidential candidate in history by early Wednesday afternoon. The Democratic presidential nominee surpassed 70,330,000 votes as of 2:38 p.m., according to The Associated Press. Biden's total shatters a previous record for the most votes cast for a president set by Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, with nearly 69,500,000 votes, according to the Federal Election Commission. (Mejdrich, 11/4)