Trump declares premature victories in battleground states on Twitter

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

President Donald Trump is prematurely declaring victory in a handful of hotly-contested battleground states via tweets Wednesday, challenging Twitter’s rules against making premature election result claims.
“We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a Big Trump lead,” Trump tweeted Wednesday.
Twitter started applying labels to the offending tweets shortly after they were posted. More than 1 million ballots are still to be counted in Pennsylvania, and election officials are not legally required to finish their count before Friday. Most importantly, the president has no authority to certify…

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