As former US vice president Joe Biden, the US Democratic presidential candidate, inched closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, US President Donald Trump’s campaign put into action the legal strategy that the president has signaled for weeks: Attack the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean his defeat.
Democrats scoffed at the legal challenges that the president’s campaign filed on Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.
In spite of the aggressive move, the flurry of court action did not seem obviously destined to impact the election’s outcome.
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The new filings, joining existing Republican legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, and raised absentee ballot concerns, the campaign said.
The Trump campaign is also seeking to intervene in a Pennsylvania case at the US Supreme Court that deals with whether ballots received up to three days after the election can be counted, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark said.
Trump’s campaign also announced that it would ask for a recount in Wisconsin.
Photo: AP
Campaign manager Bill Stepien said that there were “irregularities in several Wisconsin counties,” without providing specifics.
Biden on Wednesday said that the count should continue in all states, adding: “No one’s going to take our democracy away from us — not now, not ever.”
Campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said that the legal challenges were not the behavior of a winning campaign.
“What makes these charades especially pathetic is that while Trump is demanding recounts in places he has already lost, he’s simultaneously engaged in fruitless attempts to halt the counting of votes in other states in which he’s on the road to defeat,” Bates said in a statement.
The lawsuits that the Trump campaign filed in Michigan and Pennsylvania on Wednesday called for a temporary halt in the counting until it is given “meaningful” access in numerous locations, and allowed to review ballots that already have been opened and processed.
The Georgia lawsuit essentially asks a judge to ensure that the state laws are being followed on absentee ballots.
Campaign officials said that they were considering peppering a dozen other counties around the state with similar claims around absentee ballots.
Trump, addressing supporters at the White House early on Wednesday, talked about taking the undecided race to the Supreme Court.
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