Trump campaign legal challenges unlikely to change election, analysts say

(CNN) – The series of lawsuits that the Trump campaign has announced in various states amount to unlikely legal arguments that focus on thin claims or that affect such a small share of the vote that they would not decide the presidential election, say several legal analysts.

Lawsuits have often addressed issues that would be relatively inconsequential to voting results, such as requesting expanded access to observers who are already allowed to monitor ballot processing, or challenging a very small number of votes in which the voters who sent absentee ballots with defects were contacted in advance.

On Thursday, the Trump campaign announced a court victory in Philadelphia after a judge said observers could be closer to observe the counting procedures, a result that would not affect the votes themselves and made no major changes to the vote. observation already allowed.

At times, lawsuits have challenged double-digit ballots, which would be hundreds, if not thousands, of fewer votes potentially upsetting the outcome of any state.

In practical terms, the lawsuits mostly have the effect of fueling unfounded attempts by the Trump campaign to undermine public faith in the validity of the electoral process as President Donald Trump seeks to remain in office.

“Admitting defeat is not a plausible reaction, so soon after the election, so they throw a lot of Hail Mary demands on the wall and hope something will stick,” said Ben Ginsberg, longtime Republican election lawyer and contributor to CNN. He said these kinds of demands are not indicative of a campaign that feels optimistic and is instead in turmoil.

“I think much of the litigation is a long shot and unlikely to be successful,” said Franita Tolson, professor of law at USC Gould School of Law and a CNN contributor.

He pointed to a lawsuit in Georgia, where the Trump campaign announced Wednesday night about a poll worker mixing processed and unprocessed absentee ballots. That could have the potential to affect fewer votes, he said.

“I suspect a big goal of this litigation is, in the short term, to shift the narrative” from a possible Biden victory to a conversation about electoral mismanagement or even fraud, Tolson said.

Another law professor and CNN contributor, Rick Hasen, said the lawsuits appeared to be aimed more at public relations than at the initiative of serious litigation.

“So far these lawsuits are not addressing any major issues that appear to call into question vote totals,” he said.

Justin Levitt, another election expert and law professor, called some of the lawsuits, like one in Michigan, “laughable.”

“You say (they) didn’t put people in absent mailboxes, so stop the count. Huh?” he said.

Even a Republican-appointed federal judge in Pennsylvania questioned the validity of a Republican lawsuit Wednesday, when they challenged fewer than 100 ballots that absentee voters corrected in a county outside of Philadelphia.

At a hearing Wednesday morning, the judge, Timothy Savage, did not comment, but suggested that the attorney for the Republican scrutiny watchers was trying to disenfranchise. He noted that the lawsuit appeared to have other problems in its arguments.

Some Pennsylvania legal challenges from the Trump campaign were quickly dismissed on Election Day, and Trump touted his appeals of those losses as apparently new cases on Wednesday.

For example, a Philadelphia Election Day judge rejected a Trump campaign case regarding access to ballot processing, writing that “observers are directed only to observe and not audit ballots” and deciding that the election board of the city complied with the law. Another election day challenge from the Trump campaign to the ballot observation process in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, also near Philadelphia, was dismissed by a judge, although Trump is now appealing, according to Pennsylvania court records.

Lawyers for Trump’s campaign also filed a lawsuit in Nevada on Tuesday, alleging that their observers did not have sufficient access to all aspects of the ballot counting process, from opening ballots to typing and manual signature verification. , and the duplication of damaged ballots. A Nevada judge denied the Republican challenge to the early voting process in the Democratic-majority county.

“If this last minute lawsuit were to be successful, it would require a major change in the way (Nevada) processed the absentee (ballots) to determine whether the signature on the ballot matched the voter’s previous signature on file,” he said Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University and CNN’s electoral law analyst.

“Courts are generally unwilling to allow plaintiffs to walk in the door so late in the day and ask for major changes to a process that is already underway,” he said.

However, a lawsuit, petitioning the United States Supreme Court within Pennsylvania’s voting deadline, can be a more serious litigation challenge. It challenges the validity of several thousand votes cast in good faith by voters, but received by post-election officials through the mail.

However, for this case to make a genuine difference, Pennsylvania would have to be the decisive state for the election, and the margin of difference between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden would have to be several tens of thousands of votes.

This story was first published on CNN.com, “Trump’s campaign legal challenges are unlikely to change elections, analysts say.”