Repeated threats by President Donald Trump to challenge the election results in court took shape Wednesday with lawsuits filed in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Gerogia attempting to stop the counting of votes targeting Democrat Joe Biden.
In these states, the Trump campaign claimed that it has not been given meaningful access to counting locations to observe the ballot opening and tabulation process as warranted by state law. Pennsylvania’s submission could not be immediately confirmed. Earlier Wednesday, the campaign also said it would request a recount in Wisconsin. At the end of the day, the campaign filed a lawsuit to stop vote counting in Georgia, according to the Associated Press.
At a press conference Wednesday afternoon in Philadelphia, the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, suggested that another lawsuit could be filed in Wisconsin. He claimed that “the exact same thing happened” there in terms of denying the Trump campaign access to the vote count.
Read also: 2020 US elections: Joe Biden with 264 electoral votes, Donald Trump with 214
Trump has often said he could only lose the election if it was stolen, claiming that an increase in vote-by-mail would lead to widespread fraud. Even before Election Day on Tuesday, his campaign filed several unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to restrict the use of mail-in ballots.
Many legal experts doubt that Trump’s claims can be successful. An earlier lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania campaign that sought to observe the count, the process of opening envelopes and preparing the ballots for counting, was dismissed by a court Tuesday night without hearing arguments. The judge said the electoral board could, however, leave room for more observers if possible.
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“It’s an implausible legal strategy,” said Wendy Weiser, who runs a democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and is not running in the elections. “Trump has certainly been trying to question the legitimacy of the election, in all respects, throughout the year, and this certainly fits that pattern.”
Trump has an advantage in Pennsylvania, but hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots remain to be counted and are expected to propel the race for Biden. The president’s leadership in Michigan evaporated early Wednesday to give Biden a narrow lead, and various networks have now called the state for the Democrat.
The Trump campaign on Wednesday also moved to intervene in a pending U.S. Supreme Court showdown over late-arriving ballots in Pennsylvania. The court had refused to hear the case before the elections, but explicitly left open the possibility to do so after the vote. Introducing the campaign could drive that process forward.
In the Michigan case, top election officials are charged with violating state law by not allowing campaign staff to watch video footage of all the ballot boxes that were used to make sure there was no fraud. The Trump campaign wants the state to separate the ballots that were left at those polls while the fight continues in court.
Read also: 2020 US Presidential Election: Joe Biden Wins Michigan, Another Big Hit For Donald Trump
In Pennsylvania, the campaign accused election officials of conspiring to deliver votes to Biden. “Bad things are happening in Pennsylvania,” the campaign said. Democrats are plotting to disenfranchise and dilute Republican votes. President Trump and his team are fighting to stop it. “
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who runs elections in the state, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘More noise’
Philadelphia Commissioner Omar Sabir called the Trump campaign complaint “more noise” and said there was no merit for the claim that poll watchers were staying too far from the count.
“What we did was appropriate,” Sabir said.
It will be nearly impossible for Trump to win the election if he doesn’t win in Pennsylvania, although Biden may win without the state after he was projected as the winner in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Paul Smith, vice president of litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, said that since Pennsylvania may not be central to Biden’s victory, it takes the steam out of any litigation there. He also expressed skepticism about Trump’s ability to get the US Supreme Court to actually cast votes.
“It’s not like I can go to the Supreme Court and say ‘declare myself the winner,'” Smith said. “These votes were cast on time, legally, many of them days or weeks before the elections.”
Count request
Regarding Wisconsin’s request for a recount, Smith said it was unlikely to affect the outcome. “It’s automatic if you ask, and things go back through the machine,” he said. “But 30,000 votes definitely don’t disappear in the tally unless something really strange is going on.”
Biden’s team has taken steps to prepare for Trump’s legal attack. Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told supporters in an email that the campaign aims to launch “the largest and most comprehensive legal effort ever” after Trump “threatened to go to court. to avoid proper tabulation of votes. “
The Democratic National Committee and the Biden campaign have established a “Biden Fighting Fund” to raise money for legal fees.
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