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China -- among a handful of major countries including Russia and Mexico that has not congratulated the President-Elect -- said Monday it had "noticed that Mr. Biden declared he is the winner of the election."Germany's Angela Merkel had no such scruples, although with some subtle caveats, like 'we want you to not make us pay our share for NATO':
"Our understanding is that the outcome of the election will be determined in accordance with US laws and procedures," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told press at a regular briefing.
After declining to acknowledge Biden's victory despite repeated questions from reporters, Wang said: "We hope the new US government can meet China halfway."
Merkel on Monday again congratulated Biden on his projected election, describing him as an experienced leader who knows Germany and Europe well. After the US election, Berlin will stand "side by side" with Washington on issues such as the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, and global terrorism, she stressed.Still, wise leaders hedge their bets over the outcome with guarded gestures towards the Biden camp:
"We are allies in NATO, we share fundamental values ... and interests," the chancellor said.
However, as an important ally, the US expects Europe "to make stronger efforts to take care of our security and to stand up for our convictions in the world," she warned. "We Germans and we Europeans know that we have to take on more responsibility in this partnership in the 21st century."
Maas believes many matters would "get better" for Europe with Biden in the White House. In particular, the issue of NATO spending may not be in focus as much as it was under Trump.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has expressed hope that Joe Biden would end "interventionist" policies in South America and seek to fix relations with Caracas, which have deteriorated under Donald Trump.Russian elder statesman Mikhail Gorbachev had this to say:
"We will work, hopefully, to resume decent, sincere, direct channels of dialogue between the future government of Joe Biden and the legitimate and constitutional government of Venezuela," Maduro said in a televised speech on Sunday.Donald Trump left a minefield between the government of the United States and Venezuela ... he left a swamp.Maduro expressed hope that Biden would end US "interventionism" in South America. At the same time, the Venezuelan leader took a jab at the Barack Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president. Obama "ruled for eight years and there was no significant change," Maduro stated. He added that, despite some "minor reforms," Obama's presidency acted "in service of the military and media apparatus of the North American empire."
Maduro earlier congratulated Biden and his running mate for vice president, Kamala Harris, and said that Caracas was "ready for dialogue and understanding" with the US.
Speaking to Russian news agency TASS, Gorbachev described Biden as a "person with extensive experience in both domestic and foreign politics," and declared his hope that, as president, Biden would lead Washington towards serious dialogue with the Kremlin.Seeing as Biden has not articulated any sort of foreign policy for his potential administration, no wonder so much of the world beyond the Atlanticist axis is being cautious.
"I hope that Joe Biden will strive to normalize relations and restore trust between our countries," Gorbachev said.
He noted that he had met with Biden on numerous occasions during the Democrat's tenure as vice president, and got the impression that he understands the importance of relations with Russia.


Dominion Voting Systems, which claims to work with 1300 voting jurisdictions including nine of the 20 largest counties in the nation, produced the software used in Michigan that erroneously gave Democratic candidate Joe Biden a 3,000 vote advantage in Antrim County. After the glitch was fixed, it was discovered that President Donald Trump actually won the county by around 2,500 votes. According to WLNS:The World Tribune reports that suspect voting tabulation company Dominion Systems has ties to Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and various other Democrats:An entire Michigan county has flipped back to it's [sic] historically republican roots after a manual recount of votes. Officials with Antrim County posted updated results showing President Trump won the county with 9,783 votes making up 56.46% of ballots cast. Joe Biden earned 7,289 votes or 42.07%. The county initially "went blue" and showed a win for Biden before the error was discovered.This wasn't the only known error attributed to software provided by Dominion Voting Systems. In hotly contested Georgia, two counties had to extend their voting deadlines to accommodate for delays produced by a last-minute software update. This was called "unprecedented" by local election officials.
Antrim County officials have blamed the county's election software saying totals counted did not match tabulator tapes. 6 News has learned the "Dominion Voting System" is used Antrim County. That system is also used in 64 other counties across the state including, Ingham, Jackson, and Shiawassee, locally.
In Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Nevada, the vote counts are being closely watched. Members of the Trump campaign have called for transparency and monitoring of the ongoing vote tallies while the Biden campaign has called for "all votes to be counted." But with questions about the software that is counting millions of the votes, it's likely the Trump campaign will want further scrutiny placed on numbers coming out of jurisdictions that work with Dominion Voting Systems.
Editor's Note:
This is beyond suspicious. With reports of "The Hammer" and "Scorecard" being used to steal the election, additional attention needs to be put on Dominion Voting Systems. If the fix is in, this company may be involved.
Dominion Voting Systems has ties to prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Bloomberg reported in April of last year that Dominion Voting Systems hired a high-powered lobbying firm that includes a longtime aide to Pelosi. They hired Brownstein Farber Hyatt & Schreck. Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi's former chief of staff, is one of the lobbyists on the account.
In 2014, Dominion was listed in the Washington Post table as having donated between $25,001-$50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
Voting machine manufacturers have acknowledged that some of their equipment allows for the transmission of election-night vote counts via modem, a vulnerability security experts say hackers could easily exploit.
In Georgia, glitches with software updates on Dominion Voting Systems equipment were reported in contested polling locations in Morgan and Stanley counties.
Due to the glitches, Superior Court Judge W. Fletcher Sams extended voting until 11 p.m. on election night. The counties use voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems and electronic poll books — used to sign in voters — made by KnowInk.
The companies "uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch," said Marcia Ridley, elections supervisor at Spalding County Board of Election, Politico reported. That glitch prevented pollworkers from using the pollbooks to program smart cards that the voters insert into the voting machines.
Ridley said that a representative from the two companies called her after poll workers began having problems with the equipment Tuesday morning and said the problem was due to an upload to the machines by one of their technicians overnight.
"That is something that they don't ever do. I've never seen them update anything the day before the election," Ridley said.
Neither Dominion nor KnowInk responded to Politico's request for comment. A spokesperson for the Georgia secretary of state's office also did not respond to follow-up questions about who uploaded the dataset and whether it had been reviewed and tested by anyone beforehand.

Comment: First move: mask mandate for the whole country.