Lots of votes still need to be counted Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Well, the hour is late—or, rather, early—as this newsletter comes together. Last night's bonanza of election results produced no clear winner in the race for the White House. As counties and states slowly reported vote totals in thousands of precincts across the nation, it wasn't long before most major networks conceded that mounds of mail-in ballots still to be counted in key states prevented them from making a call for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. If you're looking for a relaxing way to watch the electoral map turn its trademark red and blue, our in-house colourist is filling them in one at a time—a slow-motion video that delivers several hours of zen and puts you at ease in these uncertain times. If you're into ASMR, the shading and sharpening offers an added aural delight. Anything to take the edge off, right? What do we know so far about the results? The three states everyone is watching now: Claire Brownell takes a look at what’s going on in three key states, all in the industrial heartland, that were once solidly Democrat until Trump flipped them in 2016. This election's winner will likely thank the good voters of Wisconsin and/or Michigan and/or Pennsylvania for tipping the contest in their favour: An unprecedented number of Americans voted by mail, a practice Democrats encouraged and Republicans criticized, without evidence, as insecure and ripe for fraud. Some states reported mail-in and early votes first, but a handful of key battlegrounds are still counting them. With results neck and neck, it might take days to decisively declare a winner—and since Democrats were more likely to mail in their votes, the final tally may look significantly different at the end of that process. Five takeaways as it all hangs in the balance: Marie-Danielle Smith boils down key observations from the opening night of the epic conclusion of Trump vs. Biden—namely, it's not a Biden landslide, it's nowhere near over, voter turnout appears to have increased substantially, the states are more divided than ever and the electoral system is a mess. Any shot at this thing being finished before the continent fell asleep has, of course, been dashed: Did you think a list of “takeaways” would fail to mention how incredibly confusing American elections are? Especially in a close race? It’s not that nobody has noticed how convoluted things are, or how difficult for average people to understand. It’s that the system is set up for inertia, not for nimble pivoting to more-coherent mail-in ballot rules. The fact the system is so weirdly inconsistent from state to state—when and how voters can register; when and how ballots can be received; when and how they are counted—prevents Trump’s predictions of widespread fraud from making much sense. The border vote: Your newsletter correspondent was up late calling counties along the Canada-U.S. border. Trump nabbed Ohio's Ottawa County, a reliable bellwether that's voted for every winner since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Biden won the same small rural pockets of Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama prevailed in the past three elections. Trump won many others. At the end of the night, some of the biggest counties along the border—Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo —were still counting votes. Meanwhile, Jason Markusoff joined the liveblog to keep an eye on right-wing reaction to last night's returns. Spoiler alert: some of the biggest personalities on the far right turned on Fox News. Biden speaks: No one conceded the election, and Biden certainly didn't declare victory. But he edged in that direction, likely attempting to thwart any plans Trump had of claiming electoral triumph. "We believe we’re on track to win this election," Biden told supporters outside a convention centre in his home base of Wilmington, Delaware. His brief remarks suggested Georgia, which hasn't voted for a Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992, was still in play. "It’s going to take time to count the votes," he said. Just before 2:30 a.m. ET, Trump told his supporters that as far as he was concerned, he's already won. He called mail-in ballots yet to be counted an "embarrassment" and a "fraud." He accused Democrats of challenging the results in court (they haven't), and then said he'd ask the Supreme Court to put a stop to more vote-counting. Stay tuned for more Maclean's coverage of the U.S. election. We'll be up bright and early this morning. Meanwhile, in Canada: We'll be back to wall-to-wall Canadian politics writing before too long. For now, here's a taste of what happened north of the border. Theresa Tam spoke with guarded positivity about a future coronavirus vaccine. "We remain cautiously optimistic that safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines will be available in the first quarter of 2021, bringing us one step closer to the widespread and long-term management of COVID-19." Rodger Cuzner is the federal government's new consul general in Boston, made official by an order-in-council recently published online. Cuzner, a former MP and two-time winner of the "most collegial" award at the Maclean's Parliamentarians of the Year gala, replaces former New Brunswick premier David Alward. And the Liberals are still filibustering the Commons ethics committee amid opposition attempts to scrutinize potential government conflicts of interest related to emergency pandemic spending programs. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 