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As
Trump's paths to victory narrowed, his campaign on Thursday was
ramping up legal challenges and said it was planning to file its
latest case in Nevada.
On Wednesday, the campaign sued in Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Georgia and asked to join a pending case at the U.S. Supreme
Court.
Experts said the litigation serves to drag out the vote count
and postpone major media from declaring Biden the victor, which
would have dire political implications for Trump.
"The current legal maneuvering is mainly a way for the Trump
campaign to try to extend the ball game in the long-shot hope
that some serious anomaly will emerge," said Robert Yablon, a
professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. "As
of now, we haven't seen any indication of systematic
irregularities in the vote count."
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement
Wednesday the lawsuits were aimed at ensuring legal votes were
counted.
“The lawsuits are meritless," said Bob Bauer, who is part of
Biden's legal team. "They’re intended to give the Trump campaign
the opportunity to argue the vote count should stop. It is not
going to stop."
Ultimately, for the lawsuits to have an impact, the race would
have to hang on the outcome of one or two states separated by a
few thousand votes, according to experts.
In Michigan and Pennsylvania, Trump asked courts to temporarily
halt the vote counts because the campaign's observers were
allegedly denied access to the counting process.
The Michigan case was dismissed on Thursday but a Pennsylvania
court ordered that Trump campaign observers be granted better
access to counting process in Philadelphia.
At the Supreme Court, the campaign is seeking to invalidate
mail-in votes in Pennsylvania that are postmarked by Election
Day but arrive by the end of Friday.
In Georgia, the Trump campaign asked a judge to require Chatham
County to separate late-arriving ballots to ensure they were not
counted, but the case was dismissed on Thursday.
"There is no consistent strategy there," said Jessica Levinson,
a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She said the
campaign was "throwing theories at a wall to see if anything
sticks for long enough to muck up the waters."
Edward Foley, who specializes in election law at the Moritz
College of Law, said the cases might have merit but only
affected a small number of ballots and procedural issues.
"But merit in that sense is very different from having the kind
of consequence that Bush v. Gore did in 2000," said Foley.
In that case, the Supreme Court reversed a ruling by Florida's
top court that had ordered a manual recount and prompted
Democrat Al Gore to concede the election to Republican George W.
Bush.
The 2000 election improbably close, with a margin of 537 votes
in Florida deciding the outcome.
The campaign is still challenging late arriving mail-in ballots
in Pennsylvania, which according to media reports numbered in
the hundreds so far, likely too few to have a meaningful impact.
In addition, it appears increasingly likely Biden can win the
race even if he loses the state.
Danielle Lang, who advocates for voting rights at Campaign Legal
Center, said Trump has a long history of attempting to whip up
mistrust in our electoral system.
"Allegations of 'irregularities' -- backed up by lawsuits, even
frivolous ones -- could potentially serve that narrative," she
said.
Experts said the lawsuits and claims of fraud might be aimed at
softening the sting of being bounced from office by calling the
process into question.
"The litigation looks more like an effort to allow Trump to
continue rhetorically attempting to delegitimize an electoral
loss,” said Joshua Geltzer, a professor at Georgetown Law's
Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by
Noeleen Walder and Aurora Ellis)
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