Trump faces long odds in challenging state vote counts

Republican surrogates for President Donald Trump resumed their legal fight yesterday to try to stop the vote count in key battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, but faced long odds given the Electoral College tally and recent court rulings that found no evidence of widespread vote fraud.

While some Republican state officials invoked the Trump mantra that only “legal votes” should be counted, others emerged to counter the campaign narrative and urge voters, and, perhaps, the president, to support the results.

“The process has not failed our country in more than 200 years, and it is not going to fail our country this year,” said Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who won her re-election bid and has congratulated Biden on his victory.

Still, Trump lawyers soldiered on six days after the election, just as personal counsel Rudy Giuliani had promised they would during a surreal weekend press conference outside a landscaping storefront in northeast Philadelphia.

Giuliani denounced the city’s vote count – which fell about 4-1 for former Vice-President Joe Biden, giving the Democrat the win on Saturday in both Pennsylvania and the US election – as “extremely troubling”.

Across the country, Republicans have complained about problems with the signatures, secrecy envelopes, and postal marks on ballots, the inability of their poll watchers to scrutinise them, and the extensions granted for mail-in ballots to arrive.

However, judges across the country largely rejected the Republican challenges over the past week as the campaign sought to interrupt the vote count as it leaned toward Biden. Trump has yet to concede the election even as Biden claimed victory and got to work on his transition plans.

At the US Supreme Court, 10 Republican state attorney generals filed an amicus brief yesterday to support a challenge to Pennsylvania’s decision to count mail-in ballots that arrived through Friday. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had unanimously upheld the three-day extension set by Democratic state officials concerned about Postal Service delays and the COVID-19 pandemic. The attorneys general say the court usurped a power reserved for state lawmakers.

DECLINED TO FAST-TRACK

The US Supreme Court had declined to fast-track the challenge, but the vote was 4-4, and three justices expressed reservations. Republicans now hope to try again with new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the court.

Earlier yesterday, an anti-abortion law centre in Michigan filed suit to complain about vote-counting procedures in Wayne County. An appeals court in Michigan, meanwhile, asked the Trump campaign to refile a case submitted last week, saying the appeal was incomplete.

And in Arizona, the Trump campaign asked in a lawsuit filed on Saturday for the right to inspect thousands of in-person ballots filled out on Election Day in the Phoenix area, alleging that poll workers had mishandled them.

In Georgia, where Biden has a small lead over Trump but the race remains too early to call, a state election official pledged yesterday to investigate any ballot problems they find.