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By Tom Hals and Jan Wolfe
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s campaign lost court rulings in highly controversial states of Georgia and Michigan on Thursday, even as he vowed to file a new lawsuit challenging what he called voting irregularities in Nevada.
In the Georgia case, the campaign alleged that 53 late-arriving ballots were mixed with on-time ballots. In Michigan, he had tried to prevent votes from being counted and gain greater access to the tabulation process.
State judges dismissed both lawsuits Thursday.
Judge James Bass, a Georgia superior court judge, said there was “no evidence” that the ballots in question were invalid.
In the Michigan case, Judge Cynthia Stephens said, “I have no basis for finding that there is a substantial probability of success at the bottom.”
Trump’s allies alleged that there were voting irregularities in populated Clark County in Nevada, which includes Las Vegas.
A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the Michigan and Georgia rulings.
Votes are still being counted in all three states, among a handful of battlefield states that could decide the presidency. Democratic challenger Joe Biden has a small lead in Nevada, Trump a small lead in Georgia and Biden is expected to win in Michigan.
At a press conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt and other Trump campaign surrogates, including former administration official Richard Grenell, did not provide evidence to support their allegations of wrongdoing and did not respond. questions from journalists.
“We believe that there are dead voters who have been counted. We are also confident that there are thousands of people whose votes have been counted and who have moved out of Clark County during the pandemic,” Laxalt said.
He said a lawsuit would be filed in federal court asking the judge to “stop the counting of improper votes.”
Joe Gloria, an elections official in Clark County, told reporters that there was no evidence that incorrect ballots were processed.
Bob Bauer, a senior advisor to Biden’s campaign, called Trump’s various demands a distraction “without merit” and said the strategy was designed to undermine the integrity of the electoral process.
“This is part of a larger disinformation campaign involving some political theater,” he said.
“They intend to give the Trump campaign an opportunity to argue that the vote counting must stop. It is not going to stop,” he told reporters Thursday.
Election legal experts have said that Trump’s legal strategy is unlikely to have a decisive impact on the election outcome.
Trump has repeatedly said that he expects the US Supreme Court, which has a conservative 6-3 majority, including three justices it appointed, to play a key role.
But the court is unlikely to have the final say decisively and any challenge would have to go through the usual judicial process, legal experts say.
In Pennsylvania, where Trump is narrowly leading but Biden is making progress, the Trump campaign and other Republicans have already presented several legal challenges.
An appeals court in Pennsylvania ordered Trump campaign officials to be allowed to take a closer look at ballot processing in Philadelphia, prompting a brief delay in the count.
Pennsylvania Democrats filed documents in the US Supreme Court Thursday saying that while they would not oppose Trump’s campaign offer to intervene in a pending appeal in which Republicans seek to block ballots for mail arriving late in the state, it was premature for the court. act on the motion.
(Reporting by Steve Holland, Doina Chiacu, Tom Hals, Karen Freifeld, Julia Harte, Jan Wolfe, Daphne Psaledakis, and Lawrence Hurley; written by Lawrence Hurley; edited by Peter Graff, Noeleen Walder, and Sonya Hepinstall)
