Anxiety, pandemic prelude US Election Day as candidates make final push

During a campaign stop in North Carolina later on Sunday, Trump called the Axios story "false" but said that he believes it is "a terrible thing" ballots are being counted after Election Day, vowing to launch legal battles when the election is over. Speaking to reporters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Biden also weighed in on the report, saying that "my response is, the president is not going to steal this election".

West said he thinks disputes over mail-in ballots "could be decisive" if the race is close. "But if Biden wins big, the legal challenges won't matter and that controversy will fade away," he said.

Besides the presidential race, Election Day will also see all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the US Senate in play. Thirteen state and territorial governorships, as well as numerous other state and local elections, will also be contested.

Due to the high volume of mail-in ballots this year, many states are not likely to finish counting them by the end of Election Day, as the ballots generally require more time to process than those cast in person. Election officials have said the country should be prepared not to know who won the White House that night.

Likely to make the situation even more complicated, some states, including Pennsylvania, where Trump stunned then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by a margin of less than one percentage point in 2016, extended the deadline for mail-in ballots until after Nov 3.

"We're sure it will take more time than it used to," Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said Thursday. "We probably won't know results on election night."

Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly worried about what will happen at the finish line of the upcoming election, according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll published on Oct 28.

Three of 4 voters express concerns about the possibility of violence on Election Day. Only 1 in 4 say they are "very confident" that the country will have a peaceful transfer of power if Biden defeats Trump. Despite hesitation to make the commitment for weeks, Trump said in October that he would accept a peaceful transfer of power.

Many US cities, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, and Portland, have been on high alert for election-related violence, looting, and vandalism, drawing from the lesson of this summer when protests erupted across the country following the death of African American man George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.