Donald Trump has begun his judicial offensive against the counting of the vote of the elections, as he announced at dawn on Wednesday, with millions of votes yet to be counted.
The president's reelection campaign has assured this Wednesday that he has already filed lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania, preparing the ground for challenging the results in two decisive states for the outcome.
The demands, according to the campaign, call for the counting to be halted until its observers are guaranteed “meaningful access” to places where votes are being counted and allowed to examine ballots that have already been processed.
The campaign is also considering intervening in a case that the Supreme Court admitted to processing, but refused to do so urgently, on whether or not the ballots received after election day can be counted.
The State Supreme Court allowed the Electoral Board to receive the ballots by mail until Friday, as long as they had the postmark of this Tuesday.
Additionally, he assures the campaign that he will ask for a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden prevails by a slight margin with the scrutiny almost complete.
To date, there has been no evidence of fraud in the count, and the spectacular increase in vote-by-mail due to the pandemic (more than 100 million used this form of suffrage throughout the country) has made some States take longer in counting.
It is not the first time that Trump, in the five years since he started his presidential career, has questioned democratic institutions.
He has in the past launched unfounded accusations of electoral fraud, he has insulted judges and prosecutors, he has disregarded the principle of the separation of powers.
But the seriousness of the offensive that he undertook early Wednesday morning, calling himself the winner with much of the scrutiny still ahead and threatening to go to the Supreme Court to suppress millions of votes cast legitimately and in good faith, is unprecedented.
The president unearthed the hatchet with a tweet, the first of the evening, which he sent after midnight.
“We are going far above, but they are trying to STEAL the elections from us.
We will never let them do it.
No votes can be cast after the polls are closed! ”He wrote.
Twitter added a warning in the message saying that the content had been "objected" and could "be misleading", as it would with several of the tweets that followed yesterday morning.
Then Trump announced an appearance for that same morning.
“This is a fraud on the American people.
A shame for our country ”, said the president from the White House, where he had followed the election night with 250 guests.
“Frankly, we have won the elections.
Our goal now is to guarantee their integrity.
We will go to the Supreme Court.
It is a very sad moment ”.
Election night left the most feared scenario: a tight recount in decisive states with the potential to extend uncertainty several days beyond Election Day and end up in court.
And Donald Trump did not wait for the end of the count to activate the attack with which he had been threatening in the last weeks of the campaign.
As the vote-by-mail count raised better prospects for Democrat Joe Biden, President Trump redoubled the attacks.
“Last night I was first, sometimes solidly, in many key states, almost all of them governed and controlled by Democrats.
Then one after the other they started to disappear as the crazy surprise ballots began to be counted.
VERY RARE, and all the pollsters made a total and historical mistake! ”He tweeted.
Trump continued to charge.
"How can it be that every time they count ballots by mail, they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?", He wondered, ignoring the fact that it was taken for granted that the meaning of the vote by mail would be largely Democratic, since Biden's campaign, more cautious with the pandemic, encouraged remote voting among his followers.
The offensive continued throughout the morning: "They find Biden votes everywhere," "they are working hard to make a 500,000-vote lead in Pennsylvania disappear," he insisted.
The president had said in the previous days that he would not claim victory until it was clear.
But he was declared the winner when there were millions of votes to be counted and the outcome was completely open.
The elections are thus heading to the Supreme Court, if Trump fulfills the threat of his first tweet.
And it happens that, weeks before the elections, the Republicans placed conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett in court, after the death of the progressive Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tilting the balance even more to the right (six votes against three) in the highest court in the country.
The horizon is reminiscent of the 2000 elections, in which the Supreme Court ended up deciding the outcome, handing the victory to Republican George W. Bush against Democrat Al Gore by just 527 votes after a complicated recount in Florida.
But that time it was a real problem with the tally and ballot errors.
This time it is an unusual accusation of fraud for which no evidence has been provided.
Trump had been preparing the ground for months to answer the vote count.
In recent weeks, he had repeated the message, without supporting evidence, that the increase in postal voting due to the pandemic could lead to electoral fraud.
"Elections should end on November 3, not weeks later," Trump tweeted in the last days of the campaign.
Something that was clear was not going to happen: even in elections without so much vote by mail, almost no state reports the final results on the same election day.
More than 100 million Americans voted by mail, an absolute record.
The president repeatedly protested in the campaign about the possibility of the recount being prolonged.
He assured that this was a "physically dangerous" scenario.
And the country is heading towards him now.
"We are going to go the same night, as soon as the elections are over, we are going to go with our lawyers," Trump told reporters Sunday.
No elected leader has the power to unilaterally stop the counting of votes.
Nor is it clear the way the president would have to take the matter to the Supreme Court, where he could not go directly.
The court does not rule on specific litigation or abstract proposals, but rather once the lower courts have ruled on the matter.
It is significant, if anything, that the Republican Party, including Vice President Pence himself, avoided entering the battle at least yesterday morning.
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