Law enforcement authorities in a number of US states warned, on Monday, of pressure to declare the winner in the presidential election, after reports that US President Donald Trump may declare his victory before completing the vote count.
Michigan State Attorney Dana Nessel told reporters that "the states do not endorse the elections on election night," and "no one can be allowed to steal these elections."
In a briefing organized by the Voter Protection Project, North Carolina attorney general, Josh Stein, said, "We have experience handling close-results elections," adding, "We may know who is the winner on Tuesday night ... and we may not know."
Stein said that if Trump announced his victory prematurely, "it would be regrettable, but this announcement would be really irrelevant."
And Sunday, the political news site Axios reported that Trump informed his close associates that he would announce his victory on Tuesday night if he was found to be ahead of the vote, and Trump described what was reported by Axios as a "false report."
But officials in several states, such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states that are likely to be decisive and whose results cannot be predicted, said that counting large numbers of mailed ballots could take at least one additional day, or maybe three days.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Cole said that since mailing ballots cannot begin counting before Tuesday, results may not be released until Thursday.
Trump had expressed his opposition to postponing the announcement of the results of the vote, saying, "I do not think it is fair that we have to wait a long time after the elections," stressing that the Republicans "will send lawyers" to address any delay in the issuance of the results.
Republicans believe that the majority of electoral cards sent by mail are in the interest of the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, and Trump has repeatedly said that the late votes not counted on Tuesday will be suspicious and possibly fraudulent.
Grant Woods, a former Arizona attorney general and a member of the advisory board for the "Water Protection Project", described the persistent claim of possible election fraud as a "myth."
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