Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a slew of last-ditch lawsuits this week in what seems to be a clear effort to try to drag out vote counting and create a cloud of uncertainty over an election he is on the verge of losing. But legal experts have noted that the lawsuits appear to be long shots and even if successful, they would not change the outcome of the race.
The Trump campaign is taking legal action in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada — all battleground states Trump has either lost (such as the state of Michigan) or faces a tough fight to win. In each case, his campaign has loudly trumpeted the filings of suits with allegations that include counting late-arriving ballots, campaign observers not having adequate access to poll counting, and invalid votes being tabulated.
So far, the legal battle is not going well. The Trump campaign lost two suits on Thursday in Michigan and Georgia.
“They all seem to have no merit whatsoever,” said Joshua Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who focuses on elections. “I think the goal is to sow discord and distrust and undermine the people and the integrity of the election. I think giving them additional air time just plays into that theory.”
Trump has repeatedly called for halting the vote counting process as Joe Biden continues to close in on Trump’s vote totals in Pennsylvania and Georgia. The totals are shifting because Democrats overwhelmingly voted by mail. Counting those votes can take longer than processing in-person votes because election officials have to verify information on ballot envelopes and then physically remove them from their envelopes before they are counted. In Pennsylvania, officials were prohibited by state law from starting to count ballots until election day, leading to a lengthy count.
Trump’s lawsuits are diversionary tactic with little legal basis, experts say
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On Thursday, Trump’s campaign also announced a suit in Nevada over alleged irregular votes, but it offered no concrete evidence for its claims. The campaign also lost in two of the suits it filed. In Georgia, a judge dismissed a case in Chatham county in which the campaign alleged 53 ballots that missed the deadline to be counted were mingled with valid ballots (the campaign did not have evidence the small group of ballots actually arrived late and election officials testified the ballots arrived on time).
In Michigan, a judge dismissed a suit from the campaign that alleged poll observers were not being given “meaningful access” to ballot counting and that campaign observers should be given recorded video footage of drop boxes. The judge said there was not a legal basis requiring officials to turn over surveillance footage and that the state had already issued an order requiring observer access, according to the Detroit Free Press. The judge also said officials had already completed counting, so the request was moot.
“It could be reflex. On most people, if you hit their patellar tendon with a small rubber mallet, you get a knee jerk. With Trump, it’s possible that if you hit his patellar tendon with a small rubber mallet, you get a lawsuit,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
“It could be a misguided sense that this sort of litigation will cast enough doubt on the election process that it somehow ends up in a declaration by the courts that undoes the will of the people (in the event that the count doesn’t go his way),” he added. “I think there are a lot of missing steps between filing a lawsuit and that final declaration.”
Bob Bauer, a top election attorney for Joe Biden’s campaign, told reporters Trump’s suits were part of an effort to “create an opportunity for them to message falsely about what’s taking place in the electoral process”.
Republicans on Thursday also withdrew a case challenging how certain mail-in ballots were handled in a suburban Philadelphia county. The case appeared focused on just 98 votes, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Republicans appeared poised to lose.
Losses aside, the Trump campaign did secure an order in Philadelphia allowing observers to get closer to workers counting ballots. The decision led to a dramatic appearance by two top Trump campaign surrogates, Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, and Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager.
Standing in front of Trump supporters waving campaign flags and holding signs that said “voting ends on election day”, the two held up a printed copy of the order and announced they were going inside for access. Counting in the convention center briefly stopped while election officials figured out how to accommodate the order, then resumed, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Despite lack of evidence, the messaging has hit home with some Trump supporters, who have been showing up to demonstrations at election centers across the country. One of the supporters standing outside the convention center was Elio Forcina, who traveled to Philadelphia from New York City and said he didn’t trust the local elections officials to conduct an accurate count. (There’s no evidence of fraud and officials have not reported irregularities.)
“There’s no way of actually counting whether or not the mail-in votes are correct,” he said, even though officials have numerous procedures in place to verify ballots.
Philadelphia officials appealed the observer decision to the state supreme court and the Trump campaign later filed a separate suit in federal court alleging they were still being denied access and asking a judge to enforce the order. But in court, a lawyer for the campaign admitted that observers had been granted access, prompting the judge to reportedly ask: “I’m sorry, then what’s your problem?”
Douglas noted that even if the Trump campaign won its effort to increase observer access to the count, there still was not evidence of fraud or wrongdoing.
“That’s great to have people observing the process. If it took a court order to have that kind of transparency, OK,” said Douglas. “That doesn’t mean there’s something nefarious going on that we should be concerned about.”
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