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Minutes after the US media announced that Democratic candidate Joe Biden had won the heated race for the US presidency, President Donald Trump rejected the result, indicating that it would prove his legal victory.
“The simple truth is that the elections are still far from over,” Trump said in a statement.
“Legal voices determine the president, not the media,” he added.
But experts say it will be difficult for Trump to change the result unless he provides evidence of widespread vote-counting fraud that has changed the results in several states.
For Irvine Richard Hasen, an expert in electoral law at the University of California, “Trump’s impeachment strategy will not lead to any results, nor will it make a difference in the outcome of the elections.”
Trump said his campaign team would go to court Monday “to ensure that electoral laws are fully enforced and that the real winner takes office.”
And he indicated that he hopes to recount the votes in the states, where Biden leads with just a few thousand votes.
He spoke in particular of Pennsylvania, where Republicans point to fraud and say thousands of late ballots have been illegally billed.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, said on Saturday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city, that “the (media) networks have no right to decide the outcome of the elections. The courts are the ones who do it. The courts annul the elections. elections when they are illegal. “
A reminder from Florida
Trump is right. As the elections do not really end until each state officially confirms the number of votes in them, which will happen in the coming weeks.
But with all the more than 150 million votes counted, Trump did not get enough votes from the electorate that officially elects the president, according to a consensus in the US media on Saturday.
The candidates have already taken refuge in the courts. In 2000, when the electoral battle between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore hinged on the outcome in Florida, where Bush led by just over 500 votes, the matter went to the Supreme Court for a recount in the state. .
And the court rejected a recount, leading to the announcement of Bush’s victory.
But in Trump’s case, not only would he have to overcome a difference of about 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania, but he would also withdraw by thousands of votes in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.
It is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will annul the election results with this difference in several states.
Count
A recount is expected in Wisconsin and Georgia, and possibly other states.
But a recount rarely changes an election. In 2016, Wisconsin’s recount added 131 votes to Trump, who was already ahead of then-Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
“In recent American elections, the recount has almost never changed the results by more than a few hundred votes,” said Stephen Hefner, an expert in electoral law at Ohio State University.
Trump’s team expected Pennsylvania to reverse its decision from months ago to accept ballots that arrive in the mail until three days after Election Day.
Republicans appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in October, but their justices were divided on the issue (four agreed, four rejected) and the decision remained the same. But the court said it could review the matter after the elections.
Now that he has the total number of nine justices he needs after Trump appointed conservative Amy Connie Barrett, Republicans are seeking a new court session to hear the case.
But Pennsylvania officials point out that the number of ballots the court can decide not to count does not exceed a few thousand, which is far less than the number Trump needs to win over Biden.
“It’s difficult to see how the ballots in question could be related to the outcome of the election,” said Cathy Bukfar, Penn State’s state affairs official, in a plea sent to court on Saturday.
Falsification?
Trump insists there is fraud. To get past Biden, this would have to be tested in multiple states and the tens of thousands of votes his opponent had gotten would have to be canceled.
So far, Trump’s team has not produced any evidence.
Giuliani said Saturday that the city of Philadelphia, which is often very Democratic, has a “sad history of election fraud,” noting that some of the ballots that came in have the names of the dead.
“This is certainly sufficient evidence to cancel the counting of a certain number of votes. This will affect the elections.”
But according to Hefner, the Republican accusations are “vague.”
“You have to present facts to back up your claims,” he said, adding that even with evidence, Republicans would have to show that the fraud was enough to turn the tide.
