Pennsylvania secretary of state says she won't order recount
13 November 2020
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said on Friday that based on unofficial returns, she will not order a recount or recanvass of ballots cast in the 2020 election, including in the presidential race.
Why it matters: PresidentTrump, who has not publicly conceded to President-elect Joe Biden, continues to litigate election results, including in Pennsylvania.
- Biden won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, AP projected on Nov. 7, pushing him over the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to win the presidency.
What they're saying: "Based on the unofficial returns submitted by all the counties to the Department of State, Secretary Boockvar has determined that she will not be ordering a recount and recanvass of the election returns in the counties, as no statewide candidate was defeated by one-half of one percent or less of the votes cast," Pennsylvania's Department of State said in a release.
- "The counties continue to adjudicate and count the approximately 100,000 provisional ballots issued to voters at the polls on Election Day, as well as the more than 28,000 military and overseas ballots that were cast in this election," Boockvar added.
- As of Friday midday, 40,000 of the provisional ballots cast had been counted or partially counted, the department said.
Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told Axios that the campaign's "litigation has not run its course in Pennsylvania and we have high confidence in it on Constitutional grounds."
- On Friday, the campaign abandoned its lawsuit in Arizona, another tacit acknowledgment that its attempt to flip states from Biden to Trump utilizing legal methods is unlikely to be effective.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.