President Donald Trump said he will go to the US Superior Court because he wants “all voting to stop” as he tries to keep the first leads in key states. He will not be able to go there immediately and it is unclear whether he has a legal argument that could affect the outcome of the elections.
Will the United States Supreme Court now interfere?
Cases often go to the Supreme Court after a ruling by a local judge and then other appeals courts. In 2000, it was more than a month before the Supreme Court issued the landmark Bush v / s Gore ruling that ultimately decided that year’s election. The CS has limited power to influence the outcome of the elections. Trump would have to raise specific legal objections, either under the Constitution or a federal statute, that could change to a fundamental state. A longtime Republican lawyer said Trump will have a hard time preventing votes received on or before Election Day from being counted.
What are Trump and Biden saying?
As the count continues in states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Trump said in a speech, in which he also falsely claimed victory, that the tabulation delays were “an embarrassment to our country.” “This is a huge fraud in our nation,” he said. . “We want the law to be used appropriately.” The Biden campaign said it had legal teams ready to counter any lawsuit. “If the president follows through on his threat to go to court to try to avoid proper vote tabulation, we have legal teams ready to deploy to resist that effort, and they will prevail,” said Biden’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon. .
Is there any foundation in Donald Trump’s statement?
Trump did not state any motive for a possible challenge, and it is unclear what wrongdoing his lawyers would point to, said Nicholas Whyte, who runs an election blog for APCO Worldwide. “Of course, before you go to the Supreme Court, you would have to go to the local courts anyway, so this conversation of taking you straight to the Supreme Court is overkill,” Whyte said.
Are there other legal challenges?
However, other lawsuits are already being prepared on various issues that could quickly make their way through the appeals process. Republicans in Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit in one county Tuesday, alleging officials illegally allowed mail-in ballots to be counted before Election Day. And Republicans are already asking the SC to block vote-by-mail ballots from being counted in Pennsylvania if they arrive after Tuesday. The Pennsylvania SC previously ordered a three-day extension for ballots to arrive.
Is there precedence on such issues?
The only time SC resolved a contested presidential election was in 2000, when it sealed the election of Republican George W. Bush by halting Florida’s vote counts that could have changed that state for Democrat Al Gore. The high court said different standards for counting votes across the state violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. “I don’t know how I could justify a law to disenfranchise people who have legally cast their votes,” Ben Ginsberg, who had advised Bush, said on CNN.
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