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Donald Trump has launched legal challenges in five key US states, alleging that election officials are counting fraudulent votes. As a result, the winner of the election could be unclear for weeks and the damage to public confidence in the democratic process could last much longer.
This is what is happening in each state. For the latest election updates, check out our live blog.
What states face voting challenges?
Michigan
The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit seeking to halt voting in Michigan on Wednesday, alleging that Republicans were not allowed to observe the counts in a ‘meaningful’ way in various locations, but a state court judge dismissed it.
Michigan Claims Court Judge Cynthia Stephens issued the ruling during a court hearing Thursday. It said it planned to issue a written ruling on Friday.
He also said the defendant, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, was not the right person to sue because she does not control the logistics of local ballot counting, even if she is the state’s director of elections. The lawsuit alleged that Ms. Benson, a Democrat, was allowing absentee ballots to be counted without teams of bipartisan and opposition observers. She was accused of undermining the “constitutional right of all Michigan voters … to participate in fair and legal elections.”
The state was key to Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, when he turned the Democrats around by less than 11,000 votes, but this year Joe Biden won all 16 electoral votes with 99 percent of the votes counted.
Georgia
The Georgia Republican Party and President Trump have asked a judge to secure and account for all late ballots.
A Republican election observer claimed that elections officials in Chatham County, Georgia added 53 late-arriving mail-in ballots to a pile of legally collected votes. Mail-in ballots are expected to lean toward Democrats.
However, a judge dismissed the lawsuit. Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass did not provide an explanation for his decision Thursday at the close of a hearing of about an hour.
The county includes the strongly Democratic city of Savannah.
Trump leads by less than 1,500 votes in the state, and Joe Biden is closing the gap. More than 98 percent of the votes have been counted.
