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Faced with the possibility of narrow losses on multiple battlefields, US President Donald Trump could have a difficult time persuading the Supreme Court to accept his call to intervene and prevent Joe Biden from becoming president.
Donald Trump. Source: Associated Press
Trump might need the court’s help in two or more states, an unlikely scenario that is vastly different from what happened in 2000, the only time the court effectively ruled a presidential election.
Twenty years ago, the entire fight was for Florida’s electoral votes and involved a recount rather than trying to stop the initial ballot counting.
The Trump campaign and Republicans are already racking up legal challenges in several states, although most are small-scale lawsuits that don’t seem to affect many votes.
Judges in Georgia and Michigan quickly dismissed the campaign lawsuits yesterday, undermining a legal campaign strategy to attack the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could spell Trump’s defeat.
The failures came as Biden approached the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.
Trump and his campaign promised even more legal action, making unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud.
Speaking in the White House meeting room yesterday, the president released a litany of claims, without evidence, about how Democrats were trying to unfairly deprive him of a second term.
“But we think there will be a lot of litigation because we can’t steal an election like this,” Trump said, suggesting that the Supreme Court could eventually decide the outcome.
Biden, for his part, has said that he hopes to win the election, but advised patience, saying: “Every ballot must be counted.”
Hours earlier, a lawyer for Biden’s campaign called the lawsuits without merit, more political than legal strategy.
“I want to emphasize that for their purposes these lawsuits do not have to have merit. That is not the purpose … It is to create an opportunity for them to send false messages about what is happening in the electoral process,” said attorney Bob. Bauer said, accusing the Trump campaign of “continually alleging wrongdoing, system failures and fraud without any foundation.”
Trump is used to suing and being sued. An analysis by USA Today found that he and his companies were involved in at least 3,500 state and federal lawsuits in the three decades before he assumed the presidency.
In a case dismissed yesterday, a Michigan judge noted that the state’s vote count had ended when it rejected the campaign’s demand to take a closer look at local election officials as they process absentee votes.
In Georgia, a state judge dismissed a case due to concerns about 53 missing ballots in Chatham County after election officials in the Savannah-area County testified that all of those ballots had been received on time. Campaign officials previously said they were considering similar challenges in a dozen other counties in the state.
In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, the Trump campaign won an appeal ruling to bring party and campaign watchers closer to poll workers processing mail-in ballots in Philadelphia.
But the order did not affect the ballot counting being carried out in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, as election officials are grappling with a flood of mail-in ballots driven by fear of voting in person during a pandemic.
Trump campaign officials joined the president in accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election, even though there is no evidence such a thing is happening.
Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, in a call with reporters yesterday, said that “every night the president goes to bed with a clue” and every night new votes “are mysteriously found in a sack.”
It is quite common in presidential elections for vote counting to continue after Election Day.
The Trump campaign has also announced that it will request a recount in Wisconsin. Stepien previously cited “irregularities in multiple Wisconsin counties,” without providing details.
The Trump campaign filed a new federal lawsuit after hours yesterday in Nevada, claiming ineligible votes were cast in the Las Vegas area, the largest Democratic stronghold in a predominantly Republican state.
The Associated Press called Wisconsin and Michigan for Biden on Thursday. The AP hasn’t called Georgia, Nevada or Pennsylvania, but Biden today led both Georgia and Pennsylvania.
The president’s attorneys have asked to intervene in a pending Republican appeal to the Supreme Court over the three-day extension for the receipt and counting of mailed ballots ordered by the Pennsylvania superior court.
State Democrats told justices they should postpone granting the request because “they may not need to hear and decide” the matter if Pennsylvania is not critical to the outcome or if late ballots would not make a difference.
