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Biden On Brink Of Presidency As Trump's Chances Fade; U.S. COVID Cases Hit Disturbing New Record With Election In Flux; WH Chief Of Staff Meadows Infected With COVID, Attended Election Party; Why The Election Still Hasn't Been Called For Biden. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired November 07, 2020 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: John Berman here alongside Alisyn Camerota, welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. So after three days, five hours and about 12 seconds or so, on this rollercoaster, very soon, the United States is likely to have a new president elect.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: As Joe Biden's lead over President Trump continues to grow in the key states of Pennsylvania and Georgia, so do his chances of claiming victory by the end of today. Former Vice President Biden is pushing unity and patience, while President Trump is defiant and his legal team vows to "keep playing until the whistle blows."

CAMEROTA: At this moment, Joe Biden sits at 253 electoral votes, the President at 213. Biden is potentially one state away from the magic number. And that's where we begin with a CNN Key Race Alert.

These are the states that hang in the balance right now, none more important than Pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes. In the Commonwealth, Joe Biden leads by nearly 29,000 votes. There's maybe more than 100,000 ballots left to count between mail-in and provisional, most of it comes from heavily Democratic leaning areas. Joe Biden has been building his margin there over the last several hours.

In Georgia, Joe Biden leads by just 7,000 votes, 16 electoral votes up for grabs. Joe Biden has actually expanded his lead overnight. He went from 4,000 to 7,000 when you were sleeping, still very much in recount territory, nevertheless, an area where Joe Biden is expanding.

The State of Arizona, a very different story, frankly, with its 11 electoral votes up for grabs. Joe Biden's lead has been shrinking. Right now he leaves by about 29,000 votes. Republicans will tell you, though, that President Trump needs about 60 percent of the remaining vote in order to overtake Joe Biden. He hasn't been getting that. Still, we expect an update from Arizona later this morning.

Finally, Nevada, six electoral votes. Joe Biden ahead by 22,000. He has been expanding his lead. What do we know about the remaining vote? Most of it comes from Clark County, which is Democratic. Again, Biden expected in all likelihood to grow his lead in Nevada as the day continues.

Let's take a look at the map overall right now. As we sit here this morning, Joe Biden has 253 electoral votes, Donald Trump with 213. The states in white there, many more paths for Joe Biden to get to 270 than Donald Trump, the clearest path, the path where they're still counting and have already started counting this morning is in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, so that's where we'll begin with Phil Mattingly at the magic wall. 20 electoral votes, Joe Biden wins it. He is the president elect. What are we seeing and where?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN U.S. CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is the biggest outstanding electoral prize and the Biden campaign is pretty clear. They feel confident about where Pennsylvania is going, that it will end up in their tally soon rather than later. We'll see about that. But I'll tell you why. They look like they're on track and they don't seem to be wrong when they look through where the vote is actually outstanding.

As John said, there's about 100,000 votes - just shy of 100,000 votes - mail-in votes outstanding, and it's how those mail in ballots have gone and where they are located that does give the confidence to the Biden campaign. As it currently stands, Joe Biden about 29,000 votes ahead of Donald Trump. That is a lead. That is a complete reversal from just about 48 hours ago when Donald Trump was ahead by nearly 500,000 votes.

So what changed? Well, they started counting mail-in ballots, which they were not allowed to count by state law until after Election Day vote was tally. Election Day vote went heavy for Republicans, with huge turnout for President Trump. Here's the problem, the mail-in ballots, even bigger for Vice President Biden.

And where it's still outstanding right now? The biggest strongholds for Democrats, Southeastern Pennsylvania, most notably, the City of Philadelphia, still 20,000 to 25,000 ballots outstanding. And if you take a look at the margin in Philadelphia, it gives you a sense of what may be coming in, Joe Biden at 80.8 percent, Donald Trump at 18.3 percent.

And here's the thing, when you start to factor in mail-in ballots, the margin is actually higher, sitting between 85 to 88 percent. As new batches come in, you factor that in, you push out into the other blue strongholds here in the collar counties and you go over to Allegheny.

[08:05:00]

We were just talking to an Allegheny County election official, home of Pittsburgh. So there's about 20,000 mail-in ballots left that they're tallying. He said those were going about 80-20 percent as well, making very clear that when it just comes to the outstanding mail-in ballots, Joe Biden has a serious advantage, not just in strongholds, but also in conservative counties.

Again, going back to the fact that what's left outstanding, mail-in ballots. Mail-in ballots leaning towards Democrat, not just in Philadelphia, not just in Pittsburgh, but even in those ruby red counties that President Trump has turned out his voters. He turned them out on Election Day, the mail-in ballots still leaning Democrat in those Republican strongholds.

BERMAN: We just talked to Rich Fitzgerald, County Executive for Allegheny County who told us about 20,000 mail-in ballots, 70,000 provisionals. I get some of the math based on his calculations. Not impossible for Joe Biden to pad his margin by 20,000 votes in this county alone.

Now, Phil, if we could take like 45 seconds to a minute to talk about provisional ballots, because I think this through some people for a loop starting yesterday afternoon. And maybe part of the reason why there hasn't been an official call yet. There may be 80,000 to 100,000 provisional ballots left and Pennsylvania. Isn't exactly clear, which will they - they will lean? Will they be more like mail ballots, will they be more like in-person balance? We have a little bit of a sense from Erie County, can you explain?

MATTINGLY: Yes. We'll pull up here right now and you'll take a look at a margin. This is the county President Trump won in 2016. Joe Biden is on the path to flipping it back in 2020. And we got a sense of where things may go for the rest of the state based on the provisional ballots in Erie County, which have been counted. And those ballots have gone 125 for President Trump 105 for Joe Biden, so generally splitting up about half and half. Generally coming in line with the margin as it currently stands.

Erie is a battleground county goes back and forth. And so when you look at what's outstanding and provisionals, Philadelphia has about 20 percent of what's outstanding. Based on what happened in Erie, what traditionally happens with provisional ballots, you're going to see a pretty similar margin to what each county has. At least that's the expectation based on historical precedent and based on what we're seeing in Erie.

So if Erie is splitting about 50:50 in range of what we've been looking at over there, Philadelphia has got about a quarter out, and they've splitting 80:20 at this point in time. Are provisionals going to change the game given where things stand and where things are about to be standing as more of the absentee ballots come in? No. Instead, it's like the absentee ballots start growing that 28,000-vote lead, 10,000, 20,000 maybe 30,000 votes and provisionals probably net out Joe Biden's votes too.

BERMAN: Yes. Grow it less, but grow it nevertheless. Let's quickly check Georgia for a second because I think this actually tells a little bit of a similar story. Joe Biden's lead grew in Georgia overnight. It went from 4,000 to 7,000. Not a huge number, but actually a pretty big percentage jump and every vote counts when it's that close. It came from Fulton County, what types of ballots were they?

MATTINGLY: Provisionals. They were a mix of a few absentee ballots, which obviously have been going heavily Democratic, but also provisional ballots as well. And why does that matter? Well, you look at the margin here in Fulton County, again, largest county in the state of Georgia, home of Atlanta, Democratic stronghold, 72.6 to 26.2 percent.

And when you saw the provisional ballots mixed in with a little bit of absentee, coming in Atlanta, mostly matched up, mostly matched up with this margin. And, again, sticking with what we were seeing in Erie, just because they're provisional ballots doesn't mean they're going to all of a sudden move away from what we've seen margin wise in each of these counties.

The counties are the same. The residents are likely the same. Maybe a different precinct, maybe went to the wrong precinct. But the provisional largely lines up with what we've seen on margins. And I will tell you, when you get a batch of 3,000 or 4000 votes at 3:00 in the morning, and you're standing at the magic wall, it is like Christmas - it is like Christmas.

But most importantly, when you pull out and you look at Georgia, has provisionals come in about 14,000 outstanding right now, some universe, with a couple thousand military and overseas votes that were waiting to come in as well. This margin matters a lot.

BERMAN: Yes.

MATTINGLY: A lot. Going from 4,000 to 7,000 matters a lot, because likely, almost certainly going into a recount. And a recount is not a place where you see 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 votes change. That would be a catastrophic failure to a degree on this level you just don't see. So every vote that Joe Biden adds to his total, every vote gives him more of a cushion to whenever that recount happens. The likelihood that Joe Biden holds on to the State of Georgia.

BERMAN: Recounts tend to change dozens votes, maybe hundreds at the tops. I can't think of a time where they've changed thousands. As for Christmas, new ballots, we could get a keystone Christmas--

MATTINGLY: Yes.

BERMAN: --sometime over the next several hours, maybe even minutes. We are expecting more votes from Pennsylvania. They are counting again in Philadelphia. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Christmas in November. We like it. We'll see what happens over the next couple of hours. Thank you very much, guys.

Let's go now to Pennsylvania where more than 80,000, we're told, mail- in ballots remain to be counted. CNN's Kate Baldwin is in Philadelphia for us this morning. What's the situation, Kate?

[08:10:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hey there, Alisyn. It's not a question of whether they're counting right now, it's why is it taking so long to finish? The short answer really is that the group of ballots that they're dealing with here in Philadelphia, they - that they're working with, they require extra attention. They require more review.

What they call them here at the convention center, they call them "problem child ballots," and that's what they say. There are about 20,000 of them that they need to be waiting through. Overnight, there were 60 workers here in the convention center, we're told, that we're prepping these ballots for review. We're told that - also that part of that includes grouping those problem child ballots into buckets, we could call them, to address a specific issue at hand.

They are - we are told that they're starting that work, starting that review. They should be started right now, if they're keeping with the schedule that they have laid out. They're also looking at 18,000 provisional ballots that they have not gone through yet, and we're told that they're not likely to be going through those until next week, starting with those on Monday.

So the entire focus here in this massive cavernous warehouse space that they are working in here in Philadelphia, the entire focus is getting through those some 20,000 mail-in ballots that are requiring extra attention to address issues that are - that could be of range and variety of things. So we are told that there are going to be updates coming today. But how soon and how many? There is not clarity on that quite yet, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. We will try to get some answers for you and for the viewers and for all of us. Thank you very much, Kate, because joining us now is the Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman. Lieutenant Governor, thanks so much. I know it's a busy day. Thank you for being with us.

LT. GOV. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): Sure.

CAMEROTA: So help us set our expectations. Do you have any sense of when the ballots will all be counted in Pennsylvania?

FETTERMAN: Well, I mean, the counts ongoing, but there isn't any good news for the president's campaign anywhere in the pockets of votes that remain. Philadelphia is going to drop a big bundle at some point this morning, Allegheny County is going to have some as well too, and those trend heavily in the vice president's favor. So, my advice to the president's legal team on the ground here in Pennsylvania is, not to buy any green bananas, because I don't think this is going to be much longer.

CAMEROTA: Wow. That is - that does give us a sense of the timeline. Is today the day that Pennsylvania pushes Joe Biden over the top?

FETTERMAN: I can't say with any certainty. But I quite frankly, am unsure why mathematically we're not already there, if you just look at where these votes are coming from. And the history of how these votes break, you're talking 75-80 percent and higher coming out of Philadelphia. And even if you give a 50:50 break. That doesn't gain the president any ground, and the vice president is already about 30,000 up. He's going to go up even more when those Philly ballots drop. And I want to emphasize, these are all legal ballots that can't be touched by any Supreme Court decision. And at this point, you have this sad strategy of trying to appeal these so-called late ballots that arrived after election night at 8:00 p.m. through Friday, and you're talking 2,000 maybe 3,000 votes all across Pennsylvania. It's an inconsequential pot of ballots. And they had to interrupt Samuel Alito's Friday night for that kind of a ruling. I mean, that I think really exemplifies their desperation. And I would just urge them to just accept math.

CAMEROTA: I mean, there's more than just those sequestered ballots that you're talking about. There's a slew of different legal challenges in Pennsylvania. Are you saying that you don't think that any of them have merit?

FETTERMAN: Well, name one that hasn't been a long shot or irrelevant to the task at hand of counting these ballots that are legally received.

CAMEROTA: In addition to the legal challenges that, as you say, are being shot down left and right, another thing that Republicans seem to be doing is criticizing your secretary of state and saying that this could all have gone much more easily. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, "State Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman accused Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar of giving faulty guidance and making unlawful changes to election rules that undermined the confidence in Pennsylvania's results." They say it had been "chaotic and a faulty processing and has so doubt."

FETTERMAN: That's categorically false. And I also would like to point out that leader Corman also said yesterday that there is no evidence of any fraud occurring in Pennsylvania too as the top Republican in Pennsylvania. Furthermore, this delay can be laid squarely at the feet of the Pennsylvania GOP who would not grant us even a 24 hour window to begin precanvassing or 48 hours, and this would have avoided all of this. This would have already been over if they had simply allowed that.

[08:15:00]

They orchestrated this long dragged out process and here we are, but at the end of the day, it's not going to go well. And I would just urge the Trump campaign to just embrace math and allow this country to move on.

CAMEROTA: Well, on that note, it doesn't seem to be in President Trump's DNA to admit defeat. I mean, at least not what we've seen in terms of his behavior in the White House over the past four years, so what do you think on that higher level if the president refuses to concede, if Biden wins?

FETTERMAN: All I know, is that the math on the ground in Pennsylvania is the U-Haul truck to the Trump presidency at this point. It's going to end it. And I would just urge at this point that we take up a collective understanding of where this is going in Pennsylvania. You look at the ballot breakdown, you look at the trends, and you just look at the simple fact that there's no path. And at this point, we need to start bringing this country together and moving forward.

CAMEROTA: And what do you think about what Joe Biden's tone has been thus far when he's come out to speak?

FETTERMAN: Absolutely, Joe Biden's handling it perfectly. And that's my point. But I am just stating the reality here where it is that there's an optimal level of cautiousness and we don't want to get in front of anything. But when we're over 30,000 votes and climbing from a giant pool of mail-in ballots that break heavily to the point of 75- 80 percent or more that are going to be added to this total, there just isn't a path mathematically.

There isn't some enchanted village of all Trump voters that hasn't weighed in yet in Pennsylvania. I know this to be true. And at this point, all they're doing is hurling these smears and allegations - baseless allegations, that's undermining the Democratic process, not only in Pennsylvania, but in the nation. We need to just come to a final understanding that the numbers aren't going to change. They haven't changed. Everything in this primary in Pennsylvania has played out exactly as everybody would say, with the numbers in the ballots on the ground.

CAMEROTA: Look, I mean, obviously, CNN's decision desk is exercising caution and looking at all the algorithm and plugging in the numbers in their models and everything and trying to proceed cautiously. But you're saying that if it were up to you, you'd call it right now.

FETTERMAN: What I'm trying to say is that I don't - no matter how generous of a perspective you have towards giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, where are these votes coming from? Where is this uncertainty lie?

And I just also want to talk about provisional ballots. I think the majority of them are going to be individuals that chose to spoil their mail-in ballot, because for whatever reason they were they wanted to vote in-person or they didn't trust the underlying integrity of the mail-in ballot process, because there was a lot of Republican misinformation and campaigning. At the end of the day, those are going to, I suspect, break even at a small margin in the Vice President's favor as well too.

CAMEROTA: Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, we always appreciate talking to you. Thank you very much.

FETTERMAN: Thank you. Let's go back to John.

BERMAN: All right. Major developments overnight, coronavirus cases reaching astronomical new records in the United States. And that number now includes the White House Chief of Staff. Stay tuned, our special live coverage continues.

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[08:20:00]

BERMAN: The counting has resumed in Philadelphia this morning. In the meantime, as we await news from there, the country is setting and then breaking new records when it comes to Coronavirus cases.

Friday alone the U.S. added more than 126,000 new coronavirus cases. That is the single highest number of cases in one day since the pandemic began. The country also saw four straight days of more than 1,000 deaths this week. 16 states are reporting record high hospitalizations, and former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned that cases are likely to explode in the coming weeks.

CAMEROTA: And also, John, we learned overnight that the White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has tested positive for the virus. CNN's Ryan Nobles joins us now from Washington. Ryan do we know when he got sick? Who he was around, things like that?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: We don't know the specifics, Alisyn, of when the Chief of Staff contracted the illness, in part because we are told that he wanted to keep it a secret. He did not want it to get. Although, the White House has said that they've done extensive contact tracing related to the Chief of Staff and who he's been in contact with.

But if you just look at where he has been in public and the way he has behaved in public over the past week, you can see that he was not taking all that many precautions to stop the spread of the coronavirus. On Election Night he was here at the White House at the election night party, not wearing a mask.

He has been seen at numerous Trump rallies leading up to Election Day fist bumping Trump supporters without a mask on. He was also at the Trump headquarters on the day of the election in close contact with many staffers also not wearing a mask. And meadows is someone who rarely, if ever, wears masks and even at times gets annoyed with reporters when they asked him why he is not wearing a mask, when they asked him to wear masks to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Also, sources inside the White House say that over the past week, the chief of staff has been in and out of the White House residence. He's been in and out of the West Wing as well. We don't know - exactly know how he's behaving at this stage, because - after his coronavirus diagnosis But we just know up until this point, at least, when he learned he had the coronavirus, he was not being very responsible.

[08:25:00]

And then also John and Alisyn, before I go, I should point out that we haven't heard very much from President Trump as it relates to the election over the past 24 to 48 hours. He is now up and tweeting this morning. He is, again, putting out a number of baseless claims about the vote count, its accuracy, trying to undermine this process. I won't get into the details, because a lot of these claims are without merit. But it just goes to show you the psyche of President Trump right now, as these votes come in. It doesn't look like he's anywhere in the ballpark of even considering conceding to Vice President Joe Biden.

BERMAN: As we keep saying, Ryan, it's not up to him. It's up to the American people. And right now the will of the American people is being felt. We are counting the votes as we speak. Thank you so much for being with us.

In Philadelphia, the counting has resumed this morning. We're waiting to get an update from Pennsylvania. We have a sense of the shape, what these ballots look like. That's next.

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[08:30:00]

BERMAN: Welcome back to CNN's special live coverage and update on two crucial states, first, the State of Nevada. Six electoral votes, Joe Biden with a 22,000 volt lead, more than 100,000 votes remaining, most from heavily Democratic areas. Many people think Joe Biden's lead will expand there.

Arizona, a bit of a different story, Joe Biden leading by 29,000 votes. 11 electoral votes up for grabs. Biden's lead has been shrinking in Arizona, though Republicans in that state will tell you not by enough, at least not yet for President Trump to overtake Joe Biden, still we're watching it very closely. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Hey, John, Arizona will be working through the weekend to try to get through the more than 200,000 ballots that were told remain to be counted. And CNNs Bill Weir is there. He's in Phoenix. So Bill, give us a status report. What are you hearing?

BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, we're hearing that the next big vote dump here is in a couple hours out of the Maricopa Recorders Office here. And what we're seeing, the metaphor I've been using is, if Joe Biden's lead is a big boulder - a big rock, President Trump has been chipping away at it with hammers when what he really needs is dynamite to blow this thing up. It's just every little gain doesn't seem to be enough as they winnow down the last few hundred thousand votes in this state.

Yesterday, President Trump picked up about 7,000 votes here in the most populous county in Arizona and to bring him within 30,000. But as you look around Navajo, Pima, Yuma County Cochise, these little trickles, little bit of advantage in each one of these dumps for President Trump, but not a big enough. Even in the Yavapai, that's McCain country, went predominantly for President Trump, but not enough to push him over. You got to wonder what the McCain family thinks about that.

There's probably about - I guess, the Secretary of State tells us last night 173,000 votes in total left in the State of Arizona, about 92,000 of those are here. But also to keep in mind 47,000 of those are provisional ballots. So these are folks who didn't have the right address on their driver's license, and they have a week to come back and correct that for their vote to be counted, so not all of those votes will be counted. People won't follow through for whatever reason.

So the window of opportunity for President Trump is really narrowing. And what's interesting is a lot of state officials - Republican state officials refused to say on a press conference yesterday that there was any sort of shenanigans going on. They refused to tow that line.

You're hearing from some Trump loyalists that things are fishy. They say this is a - as Governor Ducey of Arizona promised the president, we can do it efficiently. We can run an election in a pandemic and get it done. They're staying away from charges of election fraud. Alisyn, John?

CAMEROTA: Good to hear. Very good to hear. Bill Weir thank you for all those updated numbers for us. All right, let's go back to John.

BERMAN: And let me just say people need to stick with CNN all day long, if for no other reason you see Bill Weir do math.

In the meantime, let's go to Kristen Holmes at the voting desk. Bill brought up provisional ballots, and this has become something of a major issue in Pennsylvania. Help us understand what these are and what it means Kristen?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, this is one of the great things about this election. I know a lot of people are frustrated that we haven't called it, that they are being encouraged to be patient. But one of the great things about this election is that it's giving us an opportunity to learn things that happen in literally every election, so one of them is provisional ballots.

And right now in Pennsylvania, there are 101,000 provisional ballots. Big deal, because this is, of course, a critical swing state. So what exactly does that mean? Essentially, it is a ballot that is cast when the eligibility of the voter comes into question. Why would that come into question? It can be something incredibly simple. You forgot your ID at home, your mail-in ballot was rejected or you ordered an absentee ballot when you get there, you don't have it, but you're supposed to.

They essentially let you cast your ballot, and then they put it to the side. Now, here's the kind of catch to a provisional ballot. I talked to a an official in Erie County, Pennsylvania, I asked him how long does it take to actually count a provisional ballot, he told me one to 20 minutes per ballot.

The reason being that what you have to do or what these election officials have to do is go into the system and find out if you're actually eligible. Now in a place like Pennsylvania, they have a statewide system. They enter in the information they know. But sometimes there's a catch. Your name could be spelled a little differently in the record, which means they have to spend more time finding that record and then correcting it and making sure that you're eligible to vote.

[08:35:00]

So this, again, is just another factor that's playing into this election and something that election officials are encouraging people to remain patient as they start to go through these. They have seven days to count all these provisional ballots. John? BERMAN: One to 20 minutes per ballot. 85,000 ballots in Pennsylvania could lead to 85,000 minutes. Sounds like the worst song ever from Rent. Kristen Holmes, thank you for being with us. Thank you for explaining provisional ballots, because they are very much in play.

This morning, the president is lying. He's awake and lying about the election. We'll speak live with the Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission to hear her response, next

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[08:40:00]

BERMAN: All right, welcome back to CNN special live coverage 8:40 a.m. on the East Coast and we know that president is awake, and he his lying. He is on social media saying things that are simply not true about the election and the electoral process.

Joining us to discuss, the Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub. Ellen - commissioner thanks so much for being with us. I'm not going to read the president's tweet, because it's just false. It's an outright lie. So I want to ask you the other side of that question. Based on what you've seen, how has the process worked so far? How have our systems held up?

ELLEN WEINTRAUB, COMMISSIONER, FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION: Well, actually, it's been quite remarkable. I and many other people were so concerned about how we were going to run this election during a pandemic. And state and local officials and poll workers throughout the country really stepped up. And there have been very few complaints about how this election has run - very few substantiated complaints, let me put it that way.

There is no evidence of any kind of voter fraud. There is no evidence of illegal votes being cast. In fact - and you don't have to take my word for it, because people throughout the country - nonpartisan election experts have come out and hailed this election and how it was run.

If you want to look at the State of Pennsylvania, which the President seems to be focused on, Senator Toomey has come out and said that he has seen no evidence of fraud there. The Republican leader of the State Senate there has also said that he has seen no evidence of fraud. They would know, they're on the ground. They're there in Pennsylvania. And there really has been no evidence of fraud. None of the complaints have attached any evidence of fraud.

It's - really, we should feel very proud of ourselves that we had record turnout, and people did care about this election. They turned out in numbers that were higher than any election in the last 120 years. It was really kind of amazing. And we should all feel really good about this and when the pandemic is over thank the poll worker, thank a local election official.

CAMEROTA: Wow, it has really revealed actually the painstaking work that these election vote counters are doing. We just had our reporter Kristen Holmes on saying, that for some of these provisional ballots, it can take between one and 20 minutes.

That's the estimate of how long it takes to count it, because they have to compare the signatures sometimes, they have to look for whatever the problem was. And so I guess, Commissioner, my question is, yes, we've done really well, remarkably, but is there some way to streamline this for the future? Have we learned some lessons this time?

CAMEROTA: Well, one thing that we could do, which some states have done, and other states for reasons known only to their state legislators refuse to do is, we could start processing mail-in ballots earlier.

The states that are - have the most experience with absentee ballots do this. As the mail-in ballots come in, they start processing them, so you don't have on Election Day, in addition to having to run the in-person election, now you've got to allocate staff to start counting the millions of ballots that have been sitting there just waiting to be processed. So that I think would be my number one recommendation to try and streamline the system going forward.

I also think - and this really doesn't go so much to streamlining as to access. There are a lot of states, there are a lot of steps that states could take to make voting more accessible, because there were still people who had trouble having access to the poles, particularly in a pandemic. They were lines that were too long. There were obstacles that were placed in the way of people registering easily and then voting easily. And there are solid proposals on the table in Congress for making these processes better, and they should adopt them.

BERMAN: Just to be clear, this is not an abstraction where you're talking about legislators allowing votes to be cast before 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday night. Pennsylvania, Republicans blocked - blocked efforts to have that state begin counting the ballots that had been in earlier and now we're seeing the results. We're waiting on Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Republicans made this choice. It was an affirmative decision by them to put us in the situation we're in now.

Commissioner, I do want to ask you about the legal challenges to certain ballots that have been filed around the country. Save one case, which is a case dealing with ballots that have arrived in Pennsylvania, after the polls closed on Tuesday night, which are being segregated.

I'm not aware of any lawsuit that deals with a class of ballots or a group of - large group of ballots talking about individual ballots here or there. Is there anything out there that even in some conceivable world could overturn thousands and thousands of ballots in any state - any of these lawsuits?

[08:45:00]

WEINTRAUB: No, the lawsuits seem to be, for the most part, going after a few ballots here and a few ballots there. And given the margins, it does not look like there's anything that could affect the outcome. Back before I was on the FEC, when I was in private practice, I did some recount work. And really, if the margin is more than a few hundred votes, recount lawyers know that you're not going to be able to flip the election. So the notion that a few dozen votes here or there could make a difference, it's just not going to happen.

BERMAN: Ellen Weintraub, thank you very much for helping us understand all this. Appreciate your time.

WEINTRAUB: Thank you. My pleasure.

CAMEROTA: All right. So with the election results trending in Joe Biden's favor many of you are asking, why hasn't the race been called yet? We're going to explain, next.

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[08:50:00]

CAMEROTA: OK, folks, we know that when you look at the numbers on your screen, you can clearly see that Joe Biden is leading in those four key battleground states. And so many of you are asking why CNN why have you not called any of these states for Joe Biden yet? For that answer, and for who to blame, we turn to CNN Political Director, David Chalian and toss that hot potato right in his lap. What's going on there?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Thanks Alisyn. I love this. That's great. No, seriously, it is the question everybody's asking. It makes perfect sense. We are reporting out what are clear trends in these vote counts. So, you see, in Pennsylvania, for example, every time a batch of votes come in, especially if they're mail votes, they're going overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. He pads his lead. We've watched this for days now.

Here's the issue, what our decision desk, a team of statistical experts and analysts, who dive through every bit of vote information as reports occur, are looking to get to an extraordinarily high level of certainty that the number two candidate, in this case, Donald Trump, has no way of overtaking the number one candidate, in this case, Joe Biden, with what is still outstanding.

And so part of our reporting effort is to learn everything we can about what is outstanding, what do we know about provisional ballots? Do we know if any have been counted and how are they behaving? What do we know about any outstanding mail ballots and where they're from, all of those things. And we need to see enough vote come in to confirm that our assumption about the way these votes are going to behave is actually occurring.

And there's only one way to confirm an assumption, which is actually see the votes come in until the enough votes come in, to get you to the threshold where you are 99.7 percent certain that the number two candidate can't overtake the number one candidate, that's when a projection occurs, BERMAN: Even the construction crews had assumed the election would be over by Saturday, because they're at work - they're at work in the Washington bureau this morning.

David, the provisional ballots, to what extent has the composition of the provisional ballots, perhaps caused some pause? And, again, I don't think there is anything wrong with pause because you want certainty here. But there are an unusually high number of provisional ballots in Pennsylvania, explain why maybe it has been challenging to understand the shape of these ballots.

CHALIAN: Well, this is related to the fact that we're doing this election in the pandemic, right, John, and that that people are voting differently, specifically in Pennsylvania, which has no history of this kind of volume of vote by mail and absentee voting. And so it's not just - typically, let's say pre-pandemic, in an election, provisional ballot - somebody is not on the voter roll, they get to fill it out, it gets checked later on, or a signature doesn't match.

But here, people who received a ballot in the mail, but maybe didn't send it in, and then shows up at the polls, there's a whole new universe of people in a high mail voting election that may be casting provisional ballots on Election Day.

Now, here's the thing we have to figure out, right? We know, Election Day voters, we saw what President Trump was able to do, completely deliver a really impressive turnout of his voters on Election Day. And we know that the vote by mail voters overwhelmingly were Joe Biden voters in this election.

So knowing though, that the provisional - people who are casting provisional ballots may be more like mail voters, even though their ballot is being cast on Election Day - or are they more like Election Day voters, that needs to be sorted, because we haven't seen this kind of level of provisional ballot history because of the mail issue?

BERMAN: Do you have any sense yet, what they are looking more like, because what we're hearing from election officials, and what we're seeing in some evidence in counties like Erie County, Pennsylvania, is its right in the middle. It turns to be like the overall state turnout is what it seems to be.

CHALIAN: Again, we're hearing some reports where they've looked at some. I think I heard Kate Bolduan was reporting this morning in Philadelphia, there are some 18,000 provisional ballots. They're not even going to look at those, right, until next week. So I don't - there are some places we're not going to have insight into what the provisions look like.

[08:55:00]

But I don't want to - I just want to stress. It's not just provisionals that are still outstanding, right. So it could be that we learn more in the next vote installment of where the vote by mail is. And the provisionals become immaterial - I don't mean immaterial for the voters who cast them. They are material, they are votes, but immaterial to the outcome and the ability to make a projection. So that's where we're at right now. It's not anything other than waiting for enough vote to hit a threshold and hit that level of certainty to make a projection.

CAMEROTA: Yes, we have to go, David, but I'm just curious who's going to win?

CHALIAN: Alisyn, clearly, all the trends signs shows us who's going to win this election. We just need to get to that place of certainty to make projections.

CAMEROTA: I appreciate your exercise of caution.

CHALIAN: Sure.

CAMEROTA: Thank you for explaining all of that. It was really helpful David.

CHALIAN: Sure.

CAMEROTA: OK, up next. The counting is underway again in Philadelphia this morning, we're told. We'll speak to one of the city commissioners live.

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