Washington, Nov. 5, (dpa/GNA) – US President Donald Trump’s campaign is taking legal action in what seems to be a last-ditch effort to secure the incumbent’s re-election, but there is no direct strategy to promise a win through the courts.
The campaign has already said it will demand a recount in parts of Wisconsin, as the gap between Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is less than 1 per cent, meeting a legal threshold.
Former White House counsel Don McGhan said that, aside from the swing state of Pennsylvania, he is looking at Wisconsin and Michigan, where the race is close.
Whether this yields the desired result is uncertain. This is one possible strategy for the campaign – to try to force recounts in places where they are narrowly behind and hope for the best.
Joshua Geltzer, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center, said the recount option is one of Trump’s more “plausible” options.
Such a challenge would begin in state courts and could potentially reach the US Supreme Court after days or even weeks.
In 2000, the Supreme Court only weighed in to seal the election result in Florida after more than a month.
The more complicated strategy, and one the president seems to be advocating for, is trying to stop the counting of ballots that were legally cast.
The Trump campaign already filed a lawsuit Wednesday to halt the vote count in Pennsylvania.
The aim is to prevent the counting of votes that were sent by mail on or before Election Day, but only arrive after.
So far, the Supreme Court has deferred to the states, which run the elections.
In states where lawmakers allowed ballots to be received even after Election Day, the top judicial body allowed the measure but opted not to intervene in cases where local legislatures insisted the ballots had to be in by the close of business on November 3.
Trump’s Republican Party had previously tried to stop Pennsylvania from allowing mail-in ballots to be received until Friday by appealing to the Supreme Court, but the effort failed.
The top court indicated that the issue could be revisited after Election Day, however.
“Trump suing to stop Pennsylvania from counting votes that arrive today or later is the only viable lawsuit,” Jed Shugerman, a law professor at Fordham University, told dpa. “And it may become more or less irrelevant if Biden takes a lead in the count of the huge number of absentee and outstanding Philadelphia votes.”
Bob Bauer, an attorney who served as White House counsel under former president Barack Obama, and who now supports the Biden campaign, argued any case Trump brings to the Supreme Court would lack legal merit.
“It’s, I’d have to say, laughably without merit,” Bauer said during a press briefing. “But if they want to push something up to the Supreme Court one way or the other, presumably they can do that. We’re not worried about it.”
The Trump campaign also filed a lawsuit to halt the vote count in Michigan, arguing that the campaign has not had proper access to review how absentee ballots are opened and processed.
GNA