United States President Donald Trump said on Saturday his campaign would begin challenging US election results in court next week after media outlets called the race for Democrat Joe Biden, saying “this election is far from over.”
“We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed,” he said in a statement. He added that “the simple fact is this election is far from over.”
Trump has repeatedly made unfounded claims of fraud in the election.
However, legal experts have said that the flurry of lawsuits may have little chance of changing the outcome but might cast doubt on the process.
Notably, the campaign sued in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia and asked to join a pending case at the US 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 that 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.
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.
