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WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s campaign on Wednesday (November 11) took another step in his far-reaching legal strategy to reverse his electoral defeat with a lawsuit in Michigan, while Georgia announced a recount and President-elect Joe Biden worked to lay the foundations of its administration. .
The Republican president’s team went to federal court to try to block Michigan, a midwestern US battle state that won in 2016 but lost to Biden in media projections, from certifying the results of the elections of November 3.
Trump fell behind by roughly 148,000 votes, or 2.6 percentage points, in Michigan’s unofficial vote totals, according to Edison Research.
The lawsuit made allegations of voting misconduct, with the focus on the Democratic stronghold of Wayne County, which includes Detroit. Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the Michigan State Department, said the Trump campaign was promoting false claims to erode public confidence in the election.
“It doesn’t change the truth: Michigan’s elections were conducted fairly, safely, and transparently, and the results are an accurate reflection of the will of the people,” Rollow said in a statement.
Last Saturday, Biden achieved election victory by winning a series of states on the battlefield to exceed the 270 electoral votes required in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines who wins the presidency. Biden was also winning the national popular vote by more than 5 million votes, and some states still counted votes.
READ: Biden calls Trump’s refusal to admit a ‘shame’
Democrats and other critics have accused Trump of trying to undermine public confidence in the American electoral system and legitimize Biden’s victory through unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, as the president, the first White House incumbent to lose a nomination to reelection since 1992, he tries to hold on to power.
During the campaign, Trump had refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
Biden became the winner of the election even without taking Georgia into account. He had a lead of just over 14,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage point, in Georgia, a southern state that Democrats have not won in a presidential election since 1992.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a manual recount of all votes cast in the state’s 159 counties. He said it was expected to start this week and would be finished in time to certify results before the November 20 deadline.
The scale of the effort is such that if the vote were carried out 24 hours a day, officials would have to count more than 23,000 votes per hour in the remaining nine days.
“It will certainly take all the time we have left. It’s a huge boost,” Raffensperger said at a news conference.
Biden met with advisers on Wednesday to help him prepare to take office on January 20.
REPUBLICAN SUPPORT
Trump has refused to grant Biden the election, instead filing a series of lawsuits in key states to try to back up his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Prominent Republican lawmakers and other Trump allies have backed the president’s strategy, saying he has the right to challenge the results. Michigan’s lawsuit was filed a day after Biden called Trump’s lack of recognition “shameful.”
“The more Republican leaders lean, the more Trump believes he is still in control and the less likely he is to do what normal presidents do: make a polite concession speech; fully cooperate with the president-elect in a smooth transition process ; and validating the electoral process itself by joining his successor in the January 20 inauguration, “John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
Judges have thrown out several of Trump’s lawsuits, and legal experts say the litigation has little chance of changing the outcome. Biden extended his lead in key states on Wednesday as vote counting continued, including Pennsylvania.
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden pay their respects during a Veterans Day parade at the Korean War Memorial Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 11, 2020 (Photo: AFP / Angela Weiss).
The lawsuits are seen as part of a larger effort to find evidence to support Trump’s fraud allegations and forge a case that could end up on the Supreme Court, which has a conservative 6-3 majority, including three justices appointed by him.
A Republican strategist linked to the White House said the legal maneuvers and push for the recounts were aimed at finding evidence to back up Trump’s claims.
The strategist, like many others close to the effort, acknowledged that the Trump campaign faced an uphill struggle.
“They’re looking to throw a hundred Hail Marys,” he said, using a football term that refers to a desperate pass at the end of a game.
Trump placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, his first public appearance in addition to two golf outings since Biden was cast as the winner.
While Trump did not comment at the graveyard, in Twitter posts Wednesday he maintained his unsubstantiated narrative of voter fraud, referring to “a mountain of corruption and dishonesty” while attacking pollsters.
The outcome of elections in a small number of states remained undecided with Trump leading the way in North Carolina and Biden leading in Arizona as well as Georgia. Counts are unlikely to change results.
To stay in office, Trump would need to win all three swing states and nullify the results in one or more states in Biden’s column, a highly unlikely prospect.
