As Democrat Joe Biden approached the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, President Donald Trump’s campaign put into action the legal strategy the president had outlined for weeks: attacking the integrity of the voting process. in states where the outcome could spell defeat.
Democrats scoffed at the legal challenges the president’s campaign presented Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. And the avalanche of legal actions did not seem obviously destined to affect the outcome of the elections.
The new filings, which add to existing Republican legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, call for better access by campaign watchers to where ballots are processed and counted, and raised concerns about absent ballots, the campaign said. .
The Associated Press called Michigan for Biden on Wednesday. The AP has not called Nevada, Pennsylvania or Georgia.
Also read: Joe Biden approaches the victory of the White House, Donald Trump resorts to the courts
The Trump campaign is also seeking to intervene in a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case over whether ballots received up to three days after the election can be counted, said deputy campaign manager Justin Clark.
The Trump campaign also announced that it would ask for a recount in Wisconsin, also a state that AP asked Biden on Wednesday. Campaign manager Bill Stepien cited “irregularities in multiple Wisconsin counties,” without providing details.
Biden said Wednesday that the count should continue in all states, adding: “No one is going to take away our democracy, not now, not ever.”
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Campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said the legal challenges were not the behavior of a winning campaign.
“What makes these charades especially pathetic is that while Trump is demanding recounts in places where he has already lost, he is simultaneously involved in unsuccessful attempts to stop the counting of votes in other states where he’s on his way to defeat, “Bates said in a statement.
Also read: Trump says the campaign will legally challenge the ‘states claimed by Biden’
Meanwhile, the vote count went on until Thursday. In all elections, the results reported on Election Night are unofficial and the ballot count extends beyond Election Day. But this year, states were dealing with a flood of mail-in ballots fueled by fear of voting in person during a pandemic.
Ballots by mail usually take longer to verify and count. This year, due to the large number of mail-in ballots and a close race, results were expected to take longer.
Lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign in Michigan and Pennsylvania on Wednesday called for a temporary halt to the count until he is granted “meaningful” access in numerous places and allowed to review ballots that have already been opened and processed.
The AP’s call to Michigan for Biden came after the lawsuit was filed. The president has the upper hand in Pennsylvania, but his margin is shrinking as more mail ballots are counted. The state had 3.1 million mail-in ballots, and a court order allows counting through Friday if they were postmarked Nov. 3.
On Thursday, a state appeals court ordered a Philadelphia judge to make sure that party watchers and candidates can reach out to poll workers who process mail-in ballots in the city. The decision was made after the Trump campaign complained on Tuesday that its observer could not get close enough to poll workers to see the writing on mailed ballot envelopes, to ensure the envelope contains a signature and the name and address of an eligible voter. Ballots without such information could be challenged or disqualified.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said in a CNN interview that the Trump campaign lawsuit was “more of a political document than a legal document.”
“There is transparency in this process. The count has continued. There are observers watching this count and the count will continue, ”he said.
Michigan’s lawsuit claims Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, was allowing absentee ballots to be counted without teams of bipartisan observers and opponents. Michigan Democrats said the lawsuit was unlikely. Election watchers from both sides abounded Wednesday at one of the main polling places in question, the TCF Center in Detroit, the AP noted.
The Georgia lawsuit filed in Chatham County essentially asks a judge to make sure state laws are followed on absentee ballots. Campaign officials said they were considering peppering a dozen other counties in the state with similar lawsuits.
Trump, addressing supporters at the White House Wednesday morning, spoke about taking the indecisive race to the Supreme Court. Although it was not clear what he was referring to, his comments evoked a repeat of the court’s intervention in the 2000 presidential elections, which ended with a decision that effectively handed over the presidency to George W. Bush.
But there are important differences with respect to 2000 and they are already in sight. In 2000, Republican-controlled Florida was in critical condition, and Bush held onto a small lead. Democrat Al Gore called for a recount and the Supreme Court stopped him.
For some electoral law experts, asking the Supreme Court to intervene now seemed premature, if not hasty.
A case would have to come to court from a state where the outcome would determine the winner of the election, wrote Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, on the Election Law blog. The difference between the candidates’ vote totals should be less than the ballots at stake in the lawsuit.
“From this point on (although things may change), neither condition appears to be met,” Hasen wrote.
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