President Donald Trump and some of his Republican supporters are testing a rallying cry for their uphill fight to reverse Joe Biden’s advantage in key states on the battlefield: counting all “legal” votes. The language is loaded with a clear implication, namely that Democrats want illegal votes to be counted, a claim for which there is no evidence.
But it underscores Trump’s strategic imperatives as Biden moves closer to securing the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency – tactics that are based more on political messages than legal precedent.
“It’s not the use of the word ‘legal’ vote, it’s the constant hint that there are so many illegal or fraudulent votes,” said Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California at Irvine and author of the blog. the Electoral Law. “There is no evidence produced by the campaign to support that there has been a lot of fraud.” Even the Trump administration itself has rejected allegations of widespread voter fraud and illegal voting, although it did not mention that Trump was the one who made the accusations. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency that oversees US electoral security, also noted that local election offices have detection measures that “make it very difficult to commit fraud using counterfeit ballots.” Top election officials in the battle states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada, both Republicans and Democrats, have said they see no widespread voting irregularities, or significant instances of fraud or illegal activity. The count is slow, but that was to be expected, because a record number of people voted by mail this year in the coronavirus pandemic.
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That hasn’t stopped the chorus of Republican leaders arguing that all legal ballots should be counted, including those for the governor of Georgia, newly re-elected Senator Susan Collins of Maine and the vice president. The Democrats and Biden, on the other hand, have been left with: “Every vote must be counted.” Gabriel Sterling, a senior Georgia election official and a Republican, said Friday that the process was public and transparent, with many safeguards, and backed with “paperwork in addition to paperwork in many cases.” Meanwhile, Republican National President Ronna McDaniel, who appeared at a rally with Trump supporters in Georgia, without offering details, said the Republican Party has heard “reports” of “wrongdoing” in Georgia. He asked for “patience” so that these cases could be “investigated.” Pressed for examples, she said there were “six or seven,” but did not elaborate.
Many of this season’s ballots were mailed out of fear of the virus, which is spreading across the United States. There are numerous safeguards for those ballots built into the system to ensure that only voters eligible to vote can do so and that they cast only one ballot.
This includes updated voter lists to eliminate voters who have died or moved out of state, counting only the ballots that were sent by registered voters and, in some states, matching the signatures on the ballots with those on file. at your local election office.
Election officials say that when fraud occurs, people are caught and prosecuted and generally involves someone who wishes to honor the wishes of a loved one who recently died and knowingly or unknowingly commits a crime by filling out that ballot. A southern Illinois election judge was charged in 2016 with voter fraud after she filled out a ballot for her late husband because she said he would have wanted Trump to be president.
So far, there has been no evidence offered by Trump, or anyone else, of widespread fraud that would in any way affect the outcome of the race. That hasn’t stopped the campaign from bringing charges.
A judge in Georgia dismissed a case by state Republicans and Trump’s campaign this week that essentially sought to ensure that state laws were followed on absentee ballots, raising concern by 53 votes. Local officials stated that all of those ballots were received on time.
A statewide appeals court judge in Pennsylvania on Friday dismissed a request to prevent the state or counties from counting provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were disqualified on a technicality.
Read more | Latest updates from the 2020 US elections: Joe Biden on the cusp of victory; earnings in battlefield states
In Nevada, a lawsuit alleges that ineligible votes were cast in the Las Vegas area, the largest Democratic stronghold in a predominantly Republican state.
The lawsuit cites two examples: a woman who said she was not allowed to vote in person because a mail ballot with her signature had been cast, and a political strategist who said she was denied the opportunity to observe the ballot count to late on election night.
“Nothing that I have seen regarding the elections raises a legal problem that could be successful. There’s just nothing there, ”said Barry Richard, who represented George W. Bush in the 2000 count in Florida that ended up before the US Supreme Court. “When these kinds of lawsuits come up, it just creates contempt for the entire legal system,” he said.
Even if Trump had credible evidence that fraud may have occurred, he would have to show that it had enough of an impact on the ballots to make a difference in the election, Richard said.
“Courts don’t accept cases just to waste time,” he said.
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