As key states on the battlefield seemed to switch Blue in favor of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, President Donald Trump filed lawsuits in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia and called for a recount in Wisconsin. Later, he tweeted on Thursday: “All the states that Biden recently claimed will be legally challenged by us for voter fraud and state election fraud.” While he offered no evidence, his decision to go to court is unprecedented. In 2000, George W Bush and Al Gore also petitioned the Supreme Court to resolve a recount dispute.
Frequently asked questions on the subject:
Why did Trump say he would go to the Supreme Court?
He’s losing and the states that still counted the votes, like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, will decide the winner. But Trump knew that more than two-thirds of the remaining ballots would likely go to Biden.
Why didn’t the Supreme Court, with six conservative justices ideologically closest to Trump’s Republican Party, interfere?
The first barrier is procedural. No one, including the President of the United States, can present a case directly to the Supreme Court. The case must first go through a lower federal court or be examined by a state Supreme Court. Only after those courts have considered a case can the higher court deal with it. The Supreme Court can rule directly if it is a case between state governments or if a foreign envoy is involved, which is not the case here.
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The 2000 case concerned an insufficient vote count in Florida. Neither candidate was asking anyone to stop counting or voting. Democrat Al Gore argued that Florida voting machines had unfairly disqualified 61,000 ballots and wanted a recount in four counties. He went to the Florida State Supreme Court, which accepted the count. Only after the ruling was passed did Bush, his Republican rival appeal to the United States Supreme Court, who said that Florida’s mosaic of rules (each county had different criteria for disqualifying ballots) violated the constitutional clause that all votes must be treated equally and not long enough to synchronize all the rules. The count never happened.
Can the Supreme Court stop the vote count after the elections?
He has responded to that by remaining silent. Trump has almost no legal grounds for saying that counting after Election Day is illegal. Under Article II of the United States Constitution, the governments of each state can decide how to administer their elections. The federal government establishes general principles such as nondiscrimination and deadlines, but implementation is left to the states. All states allow ballots to be counted after the election, using absentee ballots. A group that would otherwise be disenfranchised: US military personnel based away from home.
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Federal law in the United States establishes a deadline of 35 days after Election Day, December 8 of this year, after which the count must end. Every state has deadlines within this limit. Pennsylvania’s deadline is November 6. Almost all constitutional experts in the United States have pointed out that the United States judiciary has never intervened to stop the counting of a ballot that has been cast. It is an unwritten principle that no bank is likely to fail. Conservative judges are, after all, conservative. Subsequently, a bank can decide whether certain ballots should have been disqualified.
Last year, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that says postal ballots arriving after 8 p.m. on Election Day must be disqualified. The state Supreme Court struck down, saying that due to the pandemic, postal ballots postmarked until 8 p.m. must be counted, but the count must end on Friday.
Republicans tried twice to overturn the ruling. The United States Supreme Court refused, saying it lacked time, but reserved the right to consider the matter.
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