WASHINGTON: President Donald trumpThe campaign filed lawsuits Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, laying the groundwork for the contested states as he slipped behind Democrat Joe Biden in pursuit of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.
The new filings, which add to existing Republican legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, demand better access for campaign observers to the locations where ballots are processed and counted, and raise concerns about absent ballots, the campaign said. However, in one Michigan location in question, The Associated Press observed election watchers from both sides monitoring Wednesday.
The AP called Michigan for Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday. Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia are undecided.
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 actions reveal an emerging legal strategy that the president had signaled for weeks, namely that it would attack the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could spell defeat.
His campaign also announced that it would ask for a recount in Wisconsin, a state that the AP called Biden on Wednesday afternoon. Campaign manager Bill Stepien cited “irregularities in several 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.”
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 vote counting in other states where he’s on his way to defeat, “Bates said in a statement.
Election officials continued to count votes across the country, the normal process the day after the vote. Unlike in previous years, states were grappling with a flood of mail-in ballots fueled by fear of voting in person during a pandemic. At least 103 million people voted early, either by mail or in person, representing 74% of the total votes cast in the 2016 presidential election.
Each election, the results reported on election night are unofficial and the ballot count extends beyond Election Day. 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.
The Trump campaign said it is calling for a temporary halt to the count in Michigan and Pennsylvania until it is given “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 mailed ballots are counted.
There have been no reports of ballot fraud or any type of concern outside of Pennsylvania. The state had 3.1 million mail-in ballots that take time to count and an order allows them to be received and counted through Friday if they are postmarked Nov. 3.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in an interview with CNN that the 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. She is accused of undermining the “constitutional right of all Michigan voters … to participate in fair and legal elections.” 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 Associated Press noted. They registered at a table near the entrance to Hall E of the convention center and walked between the tables where the vote was being processed. In some cases, they came in droves and huddled together for a group discussion before fanning out. Uniformed Detroit cops were available to make sure everyone behaved.
Mark Brewer, a former state Democratic president who said he was watching Detroit’s vote count as a volunteer attorney, said he had been at TCF Stadium all day and had spoken to other people who had been there the past few days. He said Republicans had not been denied access.
“This is the best absentee counting operation Detroit has ever had. They are counting votes very efficiently, despite the Republicans’ obstruction tactics.”
Republican attorneys had already launched absentee voting legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, challenging local decisions that could gain national importance in closed elections.
In an appeal to a Pennsylvania appeals court, the Trump campaign complained that one of its representatives was prevented from seeing the writing on the mail ballots that were being opened and processed in Philadelphia. A Philadelphia judge dismissed it, saying poll watchers are ordered to observe, not audit.
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 across the state with similar claims about absentee ballots.
Trump, addressing supporters at the White House Wednesday morning, spoke about taking the indecisive race to the Supreme Court. Although it was unclear what he was referring to, his comments evoked a replay of the court’s intervention in the 2000 presidential election that ended with a decision that effectively handed the presidency over to George W. Bush.
But there are important differences from 2000 and they were already on display. In 2000, controlled by the Republicans Florida it was critical and Bush held on to 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 total votes of the candidates would have to 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.
Ohio State University electoral law professor Edward Foley wrote on Twitter Wednesday: “Valid votes will be counted. (The Supreme Court) would be involved only if there were votes of questionable validity that would make a difference, which could not be the case. The rule of law will determine the official winner of the popular vote in each state. Let the rule of law work. ”
Biden’s campaign attorney, Bob Bauer, said that if Trump goes to the highest court, “he will meet one of the most embarrassing defeats a president has ever suffered in the highest court in the country.”
The judges could decide to intervene in the dispute over the three-day extension for absentee ballots if they prove crucial to the outcome in Pennsylvania.
Even a small number of contested votes could matter if a state determines the winner of the election and the gap between Trump and Biden is small.
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