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WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) – The avalanche of lawsuits triggered by US President Donald Trump over vote counting in warring states struggled to gain ground on Thursday (November 5), with two cases dismissed and other rulings. in their favor that they failed to alter the trajectory of the career towards Joe Biden.
But observers said his campaign is finding ways to make supporters believe that these elections are being stolen.
A Michigan judge rejected the campaign’s request to stop the mail-in ballot counting and ruled that the claims were pointless because the count had nearly ended in a state where Biden has already been declared the winner.
In Georgia, a judge dismissed another lawsuit and said there was no evidence to back up the Trump campaign’s claims. A federal judge denied his emergency request to stop ballot counting in Pennsylvania within hours.
The president’s team scored some victories Thursday, when an appeals court ordered election officials in Philadelphia to allow campaign watchers to get physically close while they monitored the ballot counting process.
Another Pennsylvania judge ordered state election officials to segregate certain ballots while considering campaign claims that the state illegally extended the deadline for absentee voters to provide proof of identification.
But none of the demands has managed to deliver anything like Trump’s “Stop the vote!” Demands. or invalidate the ballots that you allege without proof that they were illegally cast.
Belatedly counted mail-in ballots inexorably alienated Wisconsin and Michigan from the president on Wednesday and appeared to be doing so in Georgia and Pennsylvania on Thursday.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
‘Shady and illegal’
“The RNC is doing everything in our power to ensure that these kinds of issues are resolved and the letter of the law is followed,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement Thursday night. .
“We will not sit idly by while the Democrats use shady and illegal tactics to tip the balance in their favor and against the will of the American people.” But some election experts say that winning in court may not be the goal of the campaign.
“These lawsuits are not likely to make a difference in the outcome of the elections,” said Wendy Weiser, who runs a democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and is not participating in the elections.
“They are fabricating, both through their demands and through other actions, a way of making supporters believe that these elections are being stolen.”
Edward Foley, director of an election law program at Ohio State University, said it was possible that Trump was “trying to create a public feeling of confusion and mistrust that could fuel a political strategy.”
Outside the courtroom, the campaign allegations have resulted in protesters, gathering in front of buildings in Detroit and Phoenix where poll workers were counting the votes, echoing Trump’s claims of a massive conspiracy through megaphones. of electoral fraud, sometimes with firearms.
‘No evidence’
But the judges have had a different reaction. In the lawsuit it filed Wednesday in Georgia’s Chatham County, which includes the Democratic-leaning city of Savannah, the Trump campaign claimed that a Republican election observer saw dozens of invalid ballots arriving late and mixed with ballots at time and asked for those votes. to be separated. But the judge didn’t buy it.
“The court finds that there is no evidence that the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7 pm on Election Day, so the ballots are not valid,” Judge James Bass told dismiss the case less than a day after it was filed.
Trump has long asserted that he could only lose the election if they were stolen, and he has cast the mail-in ballots as the avenue for massive voter fraud. His campaign brought several lawsuits before the election trying to limit the use of such ballots but lost almost all of them for the same reason Bass highlighted: a lack of evidence.
But those efforts also fueled the president’s public narrative that voting by mail would lead to a rigged election.
And the Trump campaign is now pushing it even further. On Thursday morning, the campaign held a press conference in which officials vowed to sue in federal court in Las Vegas to challenge some 10,000 mail-in ballots that were allegedly illegally cast by people living out of state. .
In an incoherent speech from the White House on Thursday night, the president once again repeated his claims about a stolen election and said he hoped the courts would determine the winner.
Their claims “would end up perhaps in the highest court in the country,” Trump said. “We will see.”
For live results and updates, follow our live coverage of the US elections.
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