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(CNN) – The Trump campaign is moving from state to state to overturn the victory of President-elect Joe Biden in an increasingly savage series of legal maneuvers with no credible claims with very remote odds and little precedent.
The lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona are now attempting to advance a handful of allegations and legal theories, some based on vague and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud or minor ballot processing access complaints, as a way to prevent state officials from certifying the claims. popular vote results, currently favoring Joe Biden.
“As the Trump campaign has made its legal arguments, it has not really produced any legal fact or theory that is stronger than when it started,” said election attorney and CNN analyst Rick Hasen.
President Donald Trump’s campaign strategy seems increasingly to be to cast enough doubt on vote counts so that he can find judges who will prevent states from certifying the choice their voters made, according to election experts including Ben Ginsberg, a lawyer. Longtime Republican, now a CNN analyst. The Electoral College does not formally select the president until December 14, with a key deadline of December 8.
If that worked, in theory, it could open the way for state legislatures – especially Republicans in power in Michigan and Pennsylvania – to argue that they should make their own decisions for their Electoral College roster, handing Trump a win that goes on. against Biden’s victory in more than one state. But he couldn’t come close to giving Trump election victory without a lot of help.
“I suspect that the impossible dream of the Trump campaign is to force all these issues that have never been litigated before the Supreme Court,” Ginsberg said.
Both liberal and conservative legal experts say that the theoretical approach that Trump appears to be trying is extremely unlikely. Even longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal Wednesday night that Biden’s victory would not be overturned.
“To win, Mr. Trump must demonstrate systematic fraud, with tens of thousands of illegal votes. So far there is no evidence of that. Unless something comes up quickly, the president’s chances in court will drop precipitously as states begin to certify the results, “wrote Rove, who has long been considered a mastermind of political maneuvering during George W. Bush.
Biden’s campaign lawyers have said that the Trump campaign is a theater of lawsuits and nothing more.
The demand for the elections in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania has seen most of the Trump campaign’s attempts to confuse Biden’s apparent victory in court, and it has its boldest case in trying to prevent state leaders from certifying the results of the vote.
However, top Republicans in the Pennsylvania Legislature have said that the state’s presidential voters will follow the result of the popular vote.
Biden leads by 50,000 votes in Pennsylvania and has been projected by CNN as the state winner.
The Trump campaign filed a case in federal court Monday with many complaints about the Pennsylvania election and little evidence. The case alleges that voters have faced violations of constitutional rights, because counties took different approaches to processing absentee ballots and observers were sometimes unable to see the processing of the ballots entirely, the same types arguments that skeptical judges have faced in other courts.
The Trump campaign asked Federal Judge Matthew Brann in the Middle District of Pennsylvania to stop the certification of the election results. Brann will hear arguments and have a hearing for witnesses to testify next Tuesday and Thursday.
Other cases of Trump campaign or Republicans live in the state have to do with the handling of absentee ballots with defects or other special situations, such as missing privacy envelopes, lack of an address on the outer envelope or corrected with a vote provisional, or mailed ballots received after Election Day. Even if all cases, including a lawsuit in the US Supreme Court for late votes, were successful, the number of ballots affected would be in the few thousand. That wouldn’t be enough to overcome Biden’s lead over Trump.
Another persistent case in the state is an appeal from Democrats after Trump campaign election watchers in Philadelphia gained the ability to be a little closer to ballot processors, which the Trump campaign has used to promote their public relations effort to create doubts in the electoral process.
Michigan: lawsuit seeks to stop Biden’s victory
Two Trump campaign court cases, in Michigan state and federal courts, seek to curb or prevent Wayne state and county, which includes a heavily Democratic Detroit, from certifying votes there. Michigan officials have said the elections were conducted correctly.
In a federal court case filed Wednesday, the Trump campaign asked the court to essentially force a re-count of absentee votes in Michigan and prevent the state from certifying its election results.
CNN has projected Biden as the state winner by nearly 3% over Trump, with a nearly 150,000 vote lead.
A judge at the Michigan Court of Claims has already dismissed the statewide lawsuit two days after it was filed, calling the “evidence” that the Trump campaign promoted regarding the absentee vote count as a rumor.
At a state court hearing on Wednesday, two individual plaintiffs made a similar stink to Trump’s campaign and called for an audit to avoid certification of the result.
Attorney David Fink, representing Detroit, explained to the judge at that hearing that blocking the completion of Michigan votes would remove the state from the Electoral College, expel the selection of the president to the U.S. House of Representatives, or allow to the Republican-controlled state Legislature to try to settle its own voters list.
Judge Timothy Kenny said he would make his opinion known on Friday.
Arizona: Trump Demand Results, Says He Would Outbid Biden By “Thousands Of Votes”
The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit on Saturday seeking to block the scrutiny or certification of all ballots cast in person on Election Day in Maricopa County, the most populous county in the battlefield state that includes Phoenix, until that could be reviewed.
Biden leads Trump in state by more than 12,000 votes. CNN has not projected a winner in the state. But the Trump campaign alleges that a review of nearly 166,000 votes cast in person on Election Day “would yield up to thousands of additional votes for President Trump and other Republican candidates in the general election on November 3, 2020.”
In the lawsuit, which revived disproved claims that Sharpie pens were disenfranchising voters, the campaign argued that some voters’ ballots were rejected by tabulating machines due to defects, such as lost marks or ink smears from Sharpie pens. The campaign is trying to defend its case using statements from two voters who were suspicious but had no evidence that their ballot was not counted.
A Maricopa County elections official told the court that only 180 votes cast on Election Day were reviewable, and that there was no systemic problem with the election.
The Trump campaign has tried to delay a court hearing, and a Trump attorney tried to seal the identities of people he wanted to call to testify at a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Maricopa County attorneys objected.
“The public has a right to know how weak the plaintiffs’ evidence is,” they wrote.
The Trump campaign previously participated in an Arizona lawsuit filed by a dozen voters who alleged that the Sharpies may have caused problems on the ballot. Ultimately, they dropped that lawsuit.
Georgia does a manual count
Georgia does not have any lengthy litigation, but a manual recount is in progress, the state announced Wednesday morning. Biden leads by about 14,000 votes in the state, or 0.3%. CNN has not projected a winner in this state.
Even with a recount, a vote margin above 1,000 votes is a large and seemingly insurmountable gap that Trump must bridge. In vote counts since 2000, the average change in the number of votes has been a few hundred, according to research by the nonpartisan group FairVote.
“It is all a step on the way to the ultimate goal of the president being reelected,” campaign legal adviser Stefan Passantino said on Wednesday of the recount.
– CNN’s Jessica Schneider, Annie Grayer, Michael Warren, and Pamela Brown contributed to this report.
