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President Donald Trump and his allies are taking increasingly frenzied steps to subvert the results of the 2020 U.S. elections, including calling state lawmakers to the White House as part of an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
Other tactics include personally calling local election officials who are trying to rescind their certification votes in Michigan, suggesting in a legal challenge that Pennsylvania should sideline the popular vote there and pressure county officials in Arizona to delay the certification of vote counts.
Election law experts see it as the last gasp of the Trump campaign and say Biden is certain to enter the Oval Office in January.
But there are concerns that Trump’s effort is doing real damage to public faith in the integrity of the American election.
Joshua Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who researches and teaches electoral law, said: “It is very disturbing that some Republicans apparently cannot imagine the possibility that they have legitimately lost this election.
“We depend on democratic norms, including that the losers graciously accept defeat. It seems to be collapsing. “
Trump’s own election security agency has declared the 2020 presidential election to have been the safest in history. Days after that statement was issued, Trump fired the agency leader.
Increasingly erratic movements have no reasonable chance of changing the outcome of the 2020 election, where Biden has now received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history and has garnered the 270 electoral college votes needed to win.
But the president’s constant barrage of unsubstantiated claims, his work to personally influence local officials who certify the votes, and his allies’ refusal to admit he lost are likely to have a lasting negative impact on the country.
Legions of his followers do not believe that he has lost.
Justin Levitt, constitutional law scholar and professor at Loyola Law School: “This is about trying to establish the conditions under which half the country believes there are only two possibilities: either win or the election is stolen. And that is not a democracy. “
The two Republican tellers in Michigan’s Wayne County said Wednesday they were not confident the election was fair and impartial.
“There has been a clear lack of transparency throughout the process,” they said. But election officials responded by saying there has been no evidence of misconduct or fraud in Michigan.
Trump’s allies have focused on the way the president’s initial leadership in Michigan and some other states on election night faded as subsequent votes came, presenting it as evidence of something dire.
But a massive influx of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic leaned heavily toward Biden, who encouraged his supporters to vote by mail, and those votes were the last to be counted.
So it seemed like Trump had an advantage, when he didn’t.
In fact, Biden crushed Trump in Wayne County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Detroit, by a margin of more than 2-1 on his way to winning Michigan by 154,000 votes, according to unofficial results.
Earlier this week, the county’s two Republican tellers blocked vote certification there.
Then they relented and the results were certified. But a person familiar with the matter said Trump reached out to pollsters, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, Tuesday night after the revised vote to express gratitude for their support.
Then, on Wednesday, Ms. Palmer and Mr. Hartmann signed affidavits saying they believed the county vote “should not be certified.”
They cannot rescind their votes, according to the Michigan secretary of state. The four-member state canvassing board is expected to meet Monday and is split between two Democrats and two Republicans.
Trump seems determined to push the issue forward. He has invited Michigan Republican legislative leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Speaker of the House of Representatives Lee Chatfield, to the White House.
The Michigan legislature would be asked to select voters if Trump succeeds in convincing the state canvass board not to certify Biden’s 154,000-vote victory in the state. But both legislative leaders have indicated that they will not try to overturn Biden’s victory.
“Michigan law does not include a provision for the Legislature to directly select voters or award voters to anyone other than the person who received the most votes,” Shirkey’s spokeswoman said last week.
During a press conference in Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday, Mr. Biden said that Americans are “witnessing incredible irresponsibility, incredibly damaging messages are being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy works.”
He added: “I think it is totally irresponsible.”
Senator Mitt Romney, one of Trump’s most vocal critics in the Republican party, accused Trump of resorting to “open pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and annul the elections.”
Romney added: “It is difficult to imagine a worse and more undemocratic action by a sitting US president.”
A few hours earlier, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and others had held a press conference to allege a widespread Democratic electoral conspiracy involving multiple states and shady voting machines.
But election officials across the country have repeatedly said there was no widespread fraud.
Many of the fraud allegations come from election observers who submitted affidavits included in the lawsuits in battle states with the goal of delaying the certification of votes. Those affidavits are based on unsubstantiated innuendo and suggestions of fraud.
But they have no proof. Election observers have no auditing role in elections; They are volunteer observers.
Giuliani cited some affidavits that he said showed a large Democratic conspiracy, but added that he could not reveal much of the evidence.
Chris Krebs, the Trump administration election official fired last week for comments on 2020 security, tweeted: “That press conference was the most dangerous 1 hour 45 minute of television in US history. And possibly the craziest. “
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