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US Election 2020: Where Donald Trump’s election lawsuits are playing out
Donald Trump’s legal team has either filed or talked of filing a plethora of lawsuits in all the battleground states over counting of ballots.
The Trump campaign has filed at least six lawsuits in battleground states since Election Day to challenge the ballot counts. Republican and Democrat activists have also filed suit, but only a few of the cases may have a real chance to affect the final outcome, and only if the races remain extremely close.
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Trump has scored two wins and two losses since November 3. Below is a list of key court cases to watch:
Also Read | US Election 2020: As Joe Biden closes in on presidency, Trump resorts to lawsuits
Pennsylvania
With 20 electoral college votes, Pennsylvania is the biggest remaining prize on the map. President Donald Trump cannot win re-election without it, so slowing down the vote count and possibly challenging many of the ballots cast there has been the main focus of his legal efforts so far.
The state has already seen its voting practices get challenged all the way to the US Supreme Court, which issued a 4-4 ruling in October that allowed for a 3-day extension to receive mailed ballots. Republicans are seeking a reversal of that ruling now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the court.Court:
Two groups are asking the US Supreme Court to rule that Pennsylvania cannot count that mail-in ballots that arrived up to three days after Election Day but were postmarked by November 3, an extended deadline upheld by the state Supreme Court.
The US Supreme Court in a 4-4 decision declined to hear the case before the election but explicitly left open the possibility of doing so after the vote. The Trump campaign filed to intervene in the case Wednesday, which could push the High Court to take it up again.
Invalidating the extended deadline would block an unspecified number of ballots, potentially tens of thousands.
President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee(RNC) sued Pennsylvania’s top election official, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, claiming she improperly extended the deadline for absentee and mail-in voters to provide any missing proof of identification from November 9 to November 12. They scored a victory on Thursday when a judge ordered Boockvar to segregate mail-in ballots from voters providing identification between November 10 through November 12, saying she would rule later on the validity of the deadline extension.
The Trump campaign sued on Election Day, claiming its representatives were being denied “reasonable access” to monitor the counting of votes in Philadelphia because they were kept at a far distance from the process. The suit was dismissed on Wednesday by a Philadelphia trial court, but an appellate court on Thursday reversed that ruling and ordered officials to allow all poll observers to watch the ballot-counting from a distance of six feet.
Philadelphia election officials are seeking to appeal that decision to the state’s highest court.Court.
A group that includes Republican candidates and officials is asking a judge to block election officials in Montgomery County, which is mainly Democratic-leaning suburbs of Philadelphia, from notifying voters and helping them “cure” defective votes. The plaintiffs on Thursday withdrew their request for an emergency order segregating such votes, which may only affect a few dozen ballots.
Michigan
Biden is the projected winner of the state’s 16 electoral college votes, according to the Associated Press. The Trump campaign has tried to halt the count, saying it needs more access.
The Trump campaign claims it hasn’t been given meaningful access to counting locations to observe the process for opening and tabulating ballots as guaranteed under state law. A judge on Thursday rejected the request, saying “At this point, the essence of the count is completed, and the relief is completely unavailable.”
Georgia
Trump has a lead that is narrowing as more votes are counted. A Democrat hasn’t won a presidential election in the state since Bill Clinton.
The campaign claims a Republican poll observer in Chatham County, which includes the Democratic-leaning city of Savannah, witnessed late ballots being illegally added to a stack of on-time absentee ballots. A judge rejected that assertion, ruling Thursday that “there is no evidence that the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7 p.m. on Election Day, thereby making those ballots invalid.”
Also Read | Trump campaign team sues Georgia’s Chatham County Board of Elections over ballot sorting
Nevada
Election results from the Nevada Secretary of State showed Biden’s lead over Donald Trump to 12,042 votes, or 1 percentage point. The Trump campaign held a press conference Thursday announcing a lawsuit, which has yet to show up in online filings.
The Trump campaign alleges that 10,000 votes were illegally cast by people no longer residing in the state. It’s unclear what legal basis they’re relying on, since state law clearly permits people who have left to retain their voting privileges if they intend to return.
Wisconsin
The Trump campaign has said it will seek a recount in Wisconsin, where he trails Biden. The president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, suggested another lawsuit could be filed in the state, claiming “exactly the same thing happened” as in Pennsylvania in terms of denying the Trump campaign access to the ballot count. No suit has apparently been filed, although one Democrat has asked a judge a New York to step into the matter.
A Wisconsin woman who voted for Joe Biden asked a federal court in Manhattan to block the Trump campaign’s manager, its lawyer “and any of their agents” from seeking the launch of a recount in Wisconsin, claiming in a lawsuit that a “peculiar” state law allowing any candidate with ample cash to demand a recount has fueled “a scorched Earth tactic to sow discord and paranoia in the fields of Wisconsin.”
