Where North Carolina's Presidential Vote Count Stands

NORTH CAROLINA — Following days of vote tallies trickling in from Election Night, Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, according to projections from several news outlets including the Associated Press. The news was announced Saturday as the AP called Pennsylvania for Biden, adding 20 electoral votes to his tally and putting him over the 270 required to clinch the presidency.

The former vice president also won Nevada and as of Monday, retained a lead over President Donald Trump in Georgia and Arizona.

As his path to re-election becomes more difficult, a defiant Trump made baseless claims in a White House news conference Thursday evening that the legally cast ballots are fraudulent and that he will continue a flurry of lawsuits to stop the count.

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As it stands, Biden has 290 electoral votes, compared with 214 for Trump, according to projections by The Associated Press.

Early returns in North Carolina indicate Trump is favored to receive the state's 15 electoral votes, however, they won't be enough to change the final outcome of the election. With more than 2.7 million votes, Trump leads the race in North Carolina with a 75,385-vote lead over Biden, according to a Nov. 9 tally.

More votes must be tallied before Trump is declared the winner in North Carolina. While all voting wrapped up in North Carolina Nov. 3, the final results won't be known until Nov. 13 due to the counting of absentee and accepted provisional ballots — a normal procedure that occurs after every major election held in the state.

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As of Monday, about 94,900 absentee ballots remained outstanding in North Carolina. Provided the ballots are postmarked Nov. 3, any of those ballots returned to election officials will be counted toward vote totals through Nov. 12.

"The number of these ballots ultimately returned will be less than 99,000 because some voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day and others likely did not vote at all," the North Carolina State Board of Elections said Friday.

The state will also process 40,766 provisional ballots — the ballots cast when a voter's name does not appear on the poll book or there are other questions regarding the voter's eligibility. During the 2016 election, for example, about 61,000 provisional ballots were cast in North Carolina, of which about 27,000 were counted.

Each of North Carolina's 100 election boards will ratify their final tallies of accepted absentee and provisional ballots later this week, with the final totals released Nov. 13 when all county boards complete canvassing. The election results will then go forward for statewide certification on Nov. 24.

"Our county boards of elections are working extremely hard to count all ballots, conduct required audits and complete all other post-election tasks," NCSBE Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said Friday. "This is the process we always go through and that we must go through under state law."

While the final results of the long awaited election still remains unknown, one thing is for certain — North Carolina voters turned out en masse to cast ballots. As of election day, bout 5.49 million of North Carolina's nearly 7.36 million eligible voters had cast ballots in the General Election, representing a statewide voter turnout of 74.6 percent.

By comparison, about 69 percent of North Carolina voters participated in the 2016 General Election.

Payton Potter, Patch Staff, contributed