WHITE HOUSE - On his final day of campaigning to try to convince voters to allow him to remain U.S. president for another four years, Donald Trump declared that in his second term, "we will drain the Washington swamp and we will save the American dream."
The president on Monday in North Carolina emphasized an economic recovery amid the coronavirus pandemic, promising "we will mass distribute the vaccine within a few short weeks."
Health officials, including those in Trump's administration, predict most Americans are unlikely to be inoculated before early or mid-2021.
Trump, at the first of Monday's five rallies in four states, said his challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, if elected, "will turn America into a prison state" through lockdowns to combat the virus.
Biden said Monday in Cleveland, Ohio, that "the first step to beating the virus is beating Donald Trump."
The pandemic has overshadowed other issues in the presidential campaign with COVID-19 cases spiking in recent weeks in many of the U.S. states expected to decide the presidential election.
The coronavirus has killed at least 231,000 people and infected more than 9.2 million in the United States, the most of any country in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Biden is spending Monday in two neighboring battleground states, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
"We're done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger," Biden said of Trump at the mid-day drive-in rally in Cleveland. "The character of America is literally on the ballot."
National polls show the former vice president with about an eight-point lead, but the race is significantly tighter in the swing states that will decide the victor.
The common stop on the itineraries of both candidates is Pennsylvania, an eastern U.S. state where Biden has been ahead in recent polls, but which Trump won in 2016. The winner of Pennsylvania earns 20 of the 270 electoral votes a candidate needs to earn a four-year term in the White House.
Trump on Monday is holding a rally at the Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport, while Biden will address supporters at another drive-in event in Pittsburgh.
The president will end his campaigning with a late evening rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a replay of his 2016 finale in a state Hillary Clinton was expected to win.
Trump on Monday reiterated his desire to know the outcome of the election by late Tuesday. He again criticized the United States Supreme Court for allowing Pennsylvania to count absentee ballots as late as Friday, so long as they are postmarked by November 3.
The ruling "puts our country in danger," claimed the president in North Carolina. "I'm just so tired of some of these horrible political decisions that are being made" by judges.
During multiple campaign stops Sunday, Trump, without evidence, said, "I think a lot of fraud and misuse could take place" with mail-in ballots.
He signaled his campaign is preparing legal challenges to the counting of such ballots in Pennsylvania.
"We're going in the night of – as soon as that election is over – we're going in with our lawyers," Trump told reporters on Sunday.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Way told lawmakers in September the U.S. has not seen "any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise."
Trump denied media reports that he has told confidants he will declare victory election night even if the Electoral College outcome is unclear.
Biden commented on the report in between his campaign stops Sunday in Philadelphia.
"The president's not going to steal this election," the former vice president said.
Results from Election Day will not be official until weeks later. The deadlines vary by state, with a few reporting within a week but many not requiring final results to be reported until late November or early December.
Most years, the winner is clear before the official results with media organizations making projections based on tabulations from individual voting precincts.
This year a record number of people have cast early ballots – at least 95 million – and with many of those coming by way of mail-in ballots due to concerns about the coronavirus, the counting in some states could be slower than usual.
(VOA)