匹兹堡——在一场百年一遇的流行病笼罩下的竞选活动的最后时刻，总统唐纳德·特朗普周一在全国范围内被指控发表煽动性但未经证实的指控选举被操纵，而民主党挑战者乔·拜登则极力主张曾被视为安全的共和党州。
美国正站在十字路口。在现代历史上，选民们从未面临过在候选人之间做出选择的问题，这些候选人提出了截然相反的愿景，比如美国面临一种已导致23万美国人死亡的病毒，自大萧条以来最严重的经济萎缩，以及公民在文化和种族问题上的分歧。
周一，在竞争最激烈的战场宾夕法尼亚州进行竞选活动时，这两个人在投票过程中也出现了尖锐的分歧。
总统威胁要采取法律行动，在选举日之后停止计票。如果宾夕法尼亚州的计票需要几天时间，这是允许的，特朗普指责说，“作弊可能发生在你从未见过的地方。”
匹兹堡的拜登向大多数黑人观众传达了投票权的信息，宣称特朗普认为“只有富人才应该投票”，并将新冠肺炎描述为“美国黑人的大规模伤亡事件”。
拜登说:“我们受够混乱了，我们受够推特、愤怒、仇恨、失败和不负责任了。”拜登的竞选活动侧重于提高黑人选民的投票率，他们可能会证明几个战场州的差异。
两次竞选都坚持认为他们有获胜的途径，尽管拜登赢得所需的270张选举团选票的选择更多。特朗普除了潜在的法律手段之外，还指望他最忠诚的支持者热情高涨。
特朗普在最后一整天的竞选活动中，从北卡罗来纳州到宾夕法尼亚州再到威斯康星州，参加了五场集会。拜登把大部分时间都花在了宾夕法尼亚州，在那里获胜将使特朗普走上一条极其狭窄的道路。他还涉足俄亥俄州，这表明了他对特朗普四年前以8个百分点的优势获胜的州的信心。
这两个人传递了他们的最后信息，拜登强调了这场流行病。他宣称“战胜病毒的第一步是战胜唐纳德·特朗普”他还承诺将保留美国领先的传染病专家安东尼·福奇博士，总统曾谈到要解雇他。
与此同时，特朗普只是顺便提到了他的助手们认为是他标志性的成就——国家经济反弹，最高法院大法官艾米·科尼·巴雷特(Amy Coney Barrett)最近就职——支持一连串的不满和好斗。他愤怒地谴责媒体对竞选活动的报道，同时抱怨他也受到了中国、选举团制度和摇滚歌手乔恩·邦·乔维的不公平待遇，没有特别的顺序。
“我已经被非法围困了三年半。我想知道如果我们没有这些可怕的东西会是什么样子。我们会有一个非常，非常平静的局面，”特朗普在密歇根州的一次晚间集会上说。“人们看到我们战斗，我为你战斗。我在为生存而战。你必须活下来。”
拜登在选举日宣布了一项不同寻常的竞选举措，称他将于周二前往费城和他的家乡斯克兰顿，作为争取选票努力的一部分。他的竞选伙伴参议员卡马拉·哈里斯(Kamala Harris)将访问底特律，这是密歇根州一个黑人聚居的城市，他们的配偶也将上路。特朗普告诉记者，他将访问他在弗吉尼亚州的竞选总部，他还将在选举之夜在白宫东厅接待家人和朋友。
已经通过提前投票或邮寄投票的方式投出了近1亿张选票，这可能会导致列表的延迟。特朗普花了几个月时间声称，没有证据表明投票进行欺诈的时机已经成熟，并拒绝保证他将遵守选举结果。
特朗普周一也在斯克兰顿集会，强调该州选票丰富的东北县的重要性，并专注于该州的计票过程。他使用严厉的措辞威胁诉讼，以阻止选举日之后到达的选票列表——在一些州，早期的邮戳允许进行计数。
他说，宾夕法尼亚的投票一结束，“我们就和我们的律师一起进去”，并在周一不祥地谈到最高法院决定在周二后延长计票时间。
特朗普宣称:“他们制造了一个非常危险的局面，我的意思是危险的，身体上的危险，他们制造了一个非常非常糟糕的局面，他们为这个州做了一件非常糟糕的事情。”他谈到宾夕法尼亚州的民主党州长汤姆·沃尔夫时说:“请不要作弊，因为我们都在看着。我们都在看着你，州长。”
在选举后的三天内，宾夕法尼亚州最高法院已经就收到的缺席选票计数提出了上诉。
该州最高法院下令延期，最高法院拒绝阻止，尽管保守派法官表示有兴趣在选举后三天内采取适当的措施。这些选票被分开存放，以防诉讼继续进行。如果迟到的选票会影响投票结果，这个问题可能会变得非常重要。
拜登的一名高级法律顾问鲍勃·鲍尔(Bob Bauer)拒绝了特朗普在投票结束后动员律师质疑某些选票的承诺。
鲍尔说:“很明显，特朗普总统关注的不是他的选民，而是他的律师，他的律师不会为他赢得选举。”“我们对任何这种或那种合法的婚礼都做好了充分的准备。我们对此并不担心。”
民主党人还庆祝了一名联邦法官的决定，拒绝了共和党人在休斯顿宣布近12.7万张选票无效的另一项最后努力，因为这些选票是在大流行期间建立的免下车投票中心投的。
拜登的团队在2016年轻而易举地赢得了特朗普赢得的州，希望在选举之夜实施致命一击，以防止共和党进一步挑战。
拜登说，在参议员谢罗德·布朗和其他俄亥俄州国会民主党人的敦促下，他返回了俄亥俄州，这表明最后一次晚些时候的访问可能会获胜。民主党最受欢迎的代理人，前总统巴拉克·奥巴马，在佐治亚州进行了最后一次竞选活动。
“我原本没打算来佐治亚。我告诉米歇尔，对不起，宝贝，我得去乔治亚。这是一件大事，”奥巴马说，并指出民主党人希望他们能在前共和党大本营对特朗普进行致命一击。“佐治亚可以是州，佐治亚可以是地方。”
但尽管拜登享有强劲的民调数字，但扩大地图的举措再次引发了民主党人的焦虑，他们因特朗普2016年对希拉里·克林顿的不满而伤痕累累，希拉里·克林顿对红色州的突袭可能导致失去了长期的政党据点。
In 2020 finale, Trump combative, Biden on offense
PITTSBURGH -- In the closing hours of a campaign shadowed by a once-in-a-century pandemic, PresidentDonald Trumpcharged across the nation Monday delivering an incendiary but unsupported allegation that theelectionis rigged, while Democratic challenger Joe Biden pushed to claim states once seen as safely Republican.
America stood at a crossroads. Never before in modern history have voters faced a choice between candidates offering such opposite visions as the nation confronts a virus that has killed 230,000 Americans, the starkest economic contraction since the Great Depression and a citizenry divided on cultural and racial issues.
The two men also broke sharply Monday on the voting process itself while campaigning in the most fiercely contested battleground, Pennsylvania.
The president threatened legal action to stop counting beyond Election Day. If Pennsylvania ballot counting takes several days, as is allowed, Trump charged that “cheating can happen like you have never seen.”
Biden, in Pittsburgh, pushed a voting rights message to a mostly Black audience, declaring that Trump believes “only wealthy folks should vote" and describing COVID-19 as a “mass casualty event for Black Americans.”
“We’re done with the chaos, we’re done with the tweets, the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility,” said Biden, whose campaign has focused on increasing turnout by Black voters, who could prove the difference in several battleground states.
Both campaigns insist they have a pathway to victory, though Biden’s options for winning the required 270 Electoral College votes are more plentiful. Trump is banking on a surge of enthusiasm from his most loyal supporters in addition to potential legal maneuvers.
Trump spent the final full campaign day sprinting through five rallies, from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. Biden devoted most of his time to Pennsylvania, where a win would leave Trump with an exceedingly narrow path. He also dipped into Ohio, a show of confidence in a state that Trump won by 8 percentage points four years ago.
The two men delivered their final messages, with Biden emphasizing the pandemic. He declared that "the first step to beating the virus is beatingDonald Trump,” and he promised he would retain the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom the president has talked of firing.
Trump, meanwhile, made only passing mention of what his aides believe are his signature accomplishments — the nation's economic rebound, the recent installation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — in favor of a torrent of grievance and combativeness. He angrily decried the media's coverage of the campaign while complaining that he also was being treated unfairly by, in no particular order, China, the Electoral College system and rock singer Jon Bon Jovi.
“I have been under siege illegally for three-and-a-half years. I wonder what it would be like if we didn’t have all of this horrible stuff. We’d have a very, very calm situation," said Trump at an evening rally in Michigan. “People see that we fight and I’m fighting for you. I’m fighting to survive. You have to survive.”
Biden announced an unusual move to campaign on Election Day, saying he would head to Philadelphia and his native Scranton on Tuesday as part of a get-out-the-vote effort. His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, will visit Detroit, a heavily Black city in battleground Michigan, and both of their spouses will hit the road too. Trump told reporters he would be visiting his campaign headquarters in Virginia, and he is also hosting family and friends on Election Night in the East Room of the White House.
Nearly 100 million votes have already been cast, through early voting or mail-in ballots, which could lead to delays in tabulation. Trump has spent months claiming without evidence that the votes would be ripe for fraud and refusing to guarantee that he would honor theelectionresult.
Trump also rallied in Scranton on Monday, underscoring the importance of the state's vote-rich northeast counties, and zeroed in on the state's process to count votes. He has used stark terms to threaten litigation to stop the tabulation of ballots arriving after Election Day — counting that is allowed with earlier postmarks in some states.
He has said that “we're going in with our lawyers” as soon as the polls close in Pennsylvania and on Monday spoke ominously about the Supreme Court decision to grant an extension to count the votes after Tuesday.
“They made a very dangerous situation, and I mean dangerous, physically dangerous, and they made it a very, very bad, they did a very bad thing for this state," Trump declared. He said of Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, “Please don’t cheat because we’re all watching. We’re all watching you, Governor.”
There is already an appeal pending at the Supreme Court over the counting of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania that are received in the mail in the three days after the election.
The state’s top court ordered the extension, and the Supreme Court refused to block it, though conservative justices expressed interest in taking up the propriety of the three added days after the election. Those ballots are being kept separate in case the litigation goes forward. The issue could assume enormous importance if the late-arriving ballots could tip the outcome.
One of Biden’s top legal advisers Bob Bauer pushed back at Trump’s promise of mobilizing his lawyers after polls close to challenge certain ballots.
“It’s very telling that President Trump is focused not on his voters but on his lawyers, and his lawyers are not going to win the election for him,” Bauer said. “We are fully prepared for any legal hijinks of one kind or another. We’re not worried about it.”
Democrats also celebrated a decision by a federal judge to reject another last-ditch Republican effort to invalidate nearly 127,000 votes in Houston because the ballots were cast at drive-thru polling centers established during the pandemic.
Biden's team pushed into states Trump won handily in 2016, hoping to deliver an Election Night knockout blow that could prevent further Republican challenges.
Biden said he returned to Ohio at the urging of Sen. Sherrod Brown and other Ohio Democrats in Congress, suggesting a final, late visit could win. And the Democrats’ most popular surrogate, former President Barack Obama, made one of his final campaign stops in Georgia.
“I didn’t originally plan to come to Georgia. I told Michelle, I’m sorry, Baby, I got to go to Georgia. This is a big deal," said Obama, noting Democrats' hopes that they could deliver a knockout blow to Trump in the former GOP stronghold. “Georgia could be the state, Georgia could be the place.”
But even as Biden enjoyed strong poll numbers, the move to expand the map revived anxiety among Democrats scarred by Trump’s 2016 upset over Hillary Clinton, whose forays into red states may have contributed to losing longtime party strongholds.
