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WASHINGTON (AP): President Donald Trump’s campaign filed lawsuits Wednesday (Nov. 4) in Pennsylvania and Michigan, laying the groundwork to challenge the outcome on indecisive battlefields that could determine whether he gets another four years in the White House.
The new filings, which add to existing Republican legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, demand better access for campaign watchers to the locations where ballots are processed and counted, the campaign said.
However, in one Michigan location in question, The Associated Press observed election watchers from both sides monitoring Wednesday. Nevada is also 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 Associated Press called Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday afternoon. Campaign manager Bill Stepien cited “irregularities in several Wisconsin counties,” without providing details.
Biden said the count should continue in every state, adding: “No one is going to take away our democracy, not now, not ever,” Biden said Wednesday.
His campaign did not immediately comment on new lawsuits in Michigan or Pennsylvania over observer access. But he has been seeking donations for what he calls the “Biden Fight Fund.”
“Our legal team stands by, and they will prevail,” Biden’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a fundraising email to supporters early Wednesday.
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. So far, approximately 135 million votes have been counted, based on non-results. officials compiled by The Associated Press.
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.
Trump is a little behind Biden in Michigan. 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 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.
Lonnie Scott, chief executive of Progress Michigan, a liberal advocacy group, said Trump only filed the lawsuit to prevent The Associated Press and other media from calling the race for Biden.
“This is a Hail Mary,” he said.
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 the votes very efficiently, despite the Republican obstruction tactics.”
Republicans had already launched legal challenges related to absentee voting in Pennsylvania and Nevada, challenging local decisions that could gain national importance in closed elections.
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, Republican-controlled Florida was in critical condition, and Bush held onto 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 candidates’ vote totals should 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 with 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. – AP
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