President Trump’s reelection campaign may be on the cusp of its first major legal victory: disqualifying a small number of mail-in ballots for first-time voters in Pennsylvania who were unable to confirm their identification by the required Nov. 9 deadline.
A court ruled last week that the commonwealth’s Democratic secretary of state overstepped her authority when she instructed county officials to count such ballots as long as the voter ID requirements were met by Nov. 12, a different date than is listed in the statute.
These ballots were already segregated and uncounted, but the ruling could be a favorable sign that the Trump campaign may be able to challenge successfully all mail-in ballots received after the Election Day deadline set by the state legislature yet extended by the state Supreme Court due to the pandemic.
Still, that would only be 10,000 votes. Joe Biden leads in the state by more than 53,000 votes, which has led to the Democrat being declared the president-elect. Pennsylvania is not sufficient to changing that outcome for Trump, but without it, he has no viable path to a majority in the Electoral College.
This illustrates how difficult the task ahead is for Trump and his legal team. They are contesting the results in multiple states, with recounts coming in Georgia and possibly Wisconsin. They have filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. Many of these suits have failed.
Al Gore fought for 37 days to challenge the result in Florida and, by extension, the 2000 presidential race. But that was a single state where fewer than 600 votes separated him from Republican opponent George W. Bush. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately left that tally in place when it ruled against him in the controversial Bush v. Gore decision.
Trump needs to succeed in challenging the results in several states where he trails Biden by tens of thousands of votes. “The legal efforts are going absolutely nowhere, and I think Trump recognizes that deep down,” said a Republican operative in Washington. “But on the surface, he needs to fight it for his base for a little while longer. He also has a couple of hardcore staffers who are telling him he can still win.”
Supporters of the president, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, have made more extensive fraud claims in public than the attorneys have in court. Trump has gone even further. He tweeted in all caps about unsubstantiated claims that Dominion voting machines deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide, helping to swing Pennsylvania against him.
This may make the legal team’s job even more difficult. It also puts pressure on judges, including the three sitting justices Trump appointed to the Supreme Court, who might be inclined to side with the legal team on some legal or constitutional issues but don’t want to be seen as serving partisan political ends.
But the optics of states showing Trump leads on election night, pausing counting, and then flipping to Biden once the count resumed has many rank-and-file Republicans concerned. Trump victory true believers are plentiful on the campaign’s data team, the forecasts of which were closer in many battleground states than the public polling.
“I think Trump has to explore every legal angle and contest every vote that he can,” said GOP strategist John Feehery. “Not just because he thought he won but also because his voters think he won. Transparency is about the only thing that will help the country to move forward.”
One question that remains is at what point the challenges help people accept the result versus when they ensure they will never be accepted by one side of the political divide, as was the case in 1960, 2000, and 2016.
“The endgame is that he does exactly what he feels the Dems did to him for four years: delegitimize Biden as much as he can,” said the operative. “I’m not sure if it works, but I think he wants to try to hurt Biden as he prepares to take office.”
The “safe harbor” date for states to select their electors is Dec. 8, six days before the Electoral College is scheduled to meet.
