Trump lays groundwork for lawsuit against election results
29 October, 2020
US President Donald Trump and his campaign have already started to lay the groundwork to dispute or alter the results of the election should he lose to Joe Biden.
Mr Trump has aggressively pushed his case that states should announce a winner on November 3, election day, despite the fact that counting ballots could take weeks longer than normal.
His campaign in addition has repeatedly refused to eliminate lobbying Republican-controlled state legislatures to change their electoral school votes to Mr Trump, whether or not most voters cast their ballots for Mr Biden.
His insistence that states announce a winner on election night could mean a legal attempt to stop states from counting some mail-in ballots.
“It could be very, very proper and incredibly nice if a winner were declared on November 3 instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is very inappropriate,” Mr Trump said on Tuesday.
“And I don’t believe that’s by our laws.”
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany has pushed the same line for weeks.
Mr Trump’s comments came the day after Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who he appointed to the Supreme Court, issued an identical view while defending the court’s ruling to avoid Wisconsin counting ballots that arrived after November 3.
“Those states want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election,” Mr Kavanaugh wrote.
“And the ones states also want to manage to definitely announce the results of the election on election night, or as quickly as possible thereafter.”
The Trump administration removed mail sorting machines and mailboxes in the united states in the months before the election, worsening delays within the united states postal system as voters seek to mail within their ballots.
John Hudak, deputy director at the Brookings Institution’s Centre for Effective Public Management, said Mr Kavanaugh’s “ignorant, error-filled” opinion will not “necessarily reflect the direction of the Supreme Court on issues like this".
“No state finishes counting ballots on election night. Not one,” Mr Hudak told The National.
“That is a desperate attempt by the president to sow doubt in what the outcome of an election is, and I think there are limits to what the Supreme Court and other federal courts are willing to tolerate.”
The Supreme Court has decided the fate of an election before.
In america, the winner of the national popular vote will not necessarily win the presidency due to the electoral school system.
Each state has some number of “electors” predicated on population. These typically pick the next US president predicated on whichever candidate won the plurality of their state’s popular vote.
Mr Kavanaugh’s judgment this week particularly cited the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v Gore that prevented the key swing state of Florida from recounting ballots that the state’s voting machines had missed.
That paved just how for President George W Bush’s electoral college victory despite losing the favorite vote.
Mr Kavanaugh, Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, who became Mr Trump’s third appointee to the court on Monday, all worked on Mr Bush’s 2000 legal team in Florida.
“Florida in 2000 was a headache and a nightmare in a whole lot of ways. Now imagine five or six Floridas all at once,” Mr Hudak said.
He said this is the most likely worst-case scenario, and it might occur if a applicant holds only a narrow lead in virtually any of the main element swing states.
The Trump campaign in addition has floated the idea of convincing Republican-held legislatures in swing states to flip the state’s electoral college or university votes towards the president if Mr Biden wins the state’s popular vote.
This month The Atlantic reported that Pennsylvania Republicans have discussed such a gambit with the Trump campaign.
While Mr Trump’s false claims that mail-in voting results in significant voter fraud would serve as the pretext for such a move, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor may possibly block such efforts.
But several battleground states with considerable clout in the electoral college have a Republican-held state legislature and a Republican governor, making such a move possible, even if legally dubious.
Those states are Florida, Texas, Ohio, Georgia and Arizona.
The Trump campaign didn't respond to The National’s request for comment on this option.
“You will see Republican legislators happy to behave in anti-Democratic way,” Mr Hudak said.
But he said it was unlikely that any state legislature would muster enough votes to undo the will of the state’s voters.
“You need to assume there is a conscience at least in some but also a recognition that if we do this now, exactly what will stop Democrats from doing this to us later,” Mr Hudak said.
Mr Biden’s supporters will vote by mail and Mr Trump’s supporters are more likely to arrive to vote personally.
For that reason, some analysts have warned of a “red mirage”, where early results would primarily indicate a victory for the president on election night, and then have Mr Biden win a state’s popular vote in later weeks as mail-in ballots are counted.
Americans, particularly Democratic voters, have previously smashed early voting records and relied heavily on mail-in ballots.
While 22 states and the District of Columbia accept ballots that arrive after election day, provided that they are postmarked on or before November 3, at least six battleground states will not accept late ballots.
But swing states such as for example Florida, Arizona, NEW YORK and Colorado can start counting mail-in ballots early.
Ohio, another key battleground state, leaves this up to the discretion of local officials.
Regardless of the outcome, there is a significant chance that a sizable portion of the united states will regard whoever sits in the Oval Office come January 2021 as illegitimate.
“Whoever is elected president next week is going to be governing a deeply divided country,” Mr Hudak said.
“If Biden is elected, it’s important to understand that he’s not going to wave a magic wand and right the ship.”
Source: www.thenationalnews.com