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The key to US President Donald Trump’s persistent protest against the election is the legitimacy surrounding voting by mail.
One of the reasons for the delay in the scrutiny in this presidential election, the controversy over the provisional vote still remains. Provisional voting is a method in which a citizen who is not on the local voter list votes once and then confirms the right to vote later. A typical case is that they requested a vote-by-mail ballot first and then appear directly on Election Day for various reasons. Since I requested a vote by mail first, it is not on the voting list at the location on the day of the vote, but I accept the vote first. Those voted in this way are classified as provisional votes. If the voter voted by mail and then returned to the scene to vote, it will be verified later.
Even during the 2008 presidential election, when former President Barack Obama won, 7.6 million of the 35.5 million votes by mail were excluded from the count. However, it was not controversial because former President Obama was 10 million votes ahead of then-Republican candidate John McCain. However, the situation is different in this year’s presidential elections, where there are many competitive actions with a small vote difference. Among the enthusiastic supporters of President Trump, there is a claim that “a person who has already died voted” and “a person who voted in another state went to the race state and voted again based on the newly issued driver’s license.”
Trump Camp has filed lawsuits to suspend the count in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. This is because Republican observers were denied access during the counting process. Additionally, the post-Election Day vote-by-mail issue is also an issue on the Trump Camp side. The observer problem has been ruled out for lack of evidence. Regarding the extension of the voting-by-mail deadline, there is a possibility that the court will accept it only if sufficient grounds have been established to suspect illegality.
The Trump Camp side is taking the matter to the Federal Supreme Court, making it difficult for the confusion to be resolved early. However, as the lawsuit brought by President Trump is successively dismissed in the lower courts for lack of evidence, etc., it is unlikely that the ruling will change in the Supreme Court. Barry Richard, who led former President George W. Bush’s demand for a recount in 2000, told CNBC that “the lawsuits filed so far are unlikely to win.” The American counting system insists on a decentralized system rather than a centralized system like Korea. For this reason, it will take a considerable amount of time to go through the process of examining whether individual votes come from legitimate voters.
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