If there's one thing Donald Trump knows how to do, it's filing lawsuits. Come to think of it, that might be about all he's really perfected in life. In Pennsylvania and Michigan and Georgia and Nevada, the Trump campaign is throwing whatever ridiculousness they can come up with at the legal wall, and so far, nothing is sticking. Because he's got nothing.
A challenge in Chatham County, Georgia, is among the silliest. The campaign alleged that a poll watcher saw 53 ballots separated out from a bin of other ballots and so that must have meant that they weren't delivered on time to be counted by 7 PM Tuesday. But asked if he had any evidence—at all—that they weren't delivered on time, he said he didn't know. The campaign put up another poll watcher who said he had "questions" about the chain of custody of those 53 ballots. Did he have any evidence they arrived late? Nope. An elections official then testified that those 53 ballots "were, in fact, received by GA's Election Day deadline, saying they were handled separately because they didn't show up on a manifest of absentee voters so they had to be checked." And the case was dismissed after having wasted a lot of people's time, including an election official in a state that right now has both a presidential and Senate race down to the wire.
They've got another one in Pennsylvania, apart from the suit they've filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, that's just a nuisance suit to gum up the works. They wanted their observers to have "closer observation" in Philadelphia's canvassing center than the 6 feet ordered by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. They appealed that 6 feet of distancing but were denied. They can't try to infect the vote counters by standing closer than 6 feet to them. They have a second request at the Commonwealth Court asking "officials to segregate/preserve ballots that were already canvassed so they could check to make sure they complied with election law." The court didn't address that in its order. As Mark Sumner noted, the campaign made the most of that order so that their observers can continue to observe. From 6 feet away. As if that was ... something.
The campaign is also filing a federal suit in Nevada to stop the counting, alleging voter irregularities including dead voters and non-residents. Pressed by local reporters and by NBC's Jacob Soboroff for any evidence at all of thousands of fraudulent ballots being cast in Nevada, former Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, who was acting as a Trump surrogate, refused to answer. They say they'll show their evidence later in the day, when they formally file. So right now you can imagine a whole bunch of Nevada Republicans desperately trying to manufacture "evidence."
The Trump campaign has been threatening to try to halt vote counting in Michigan, to initiate a recount in Wisconsin, and even more challenges in Pennsylvania where as of Wednesday there were something like six Republican suits. As of now, there's not a single case that has merit or that should be taken seriously coming from Trump. That is something that the U.S. Supreme Court should think about seriously if they’re really considering coming to his rescue. He's basically being laughed out of every lower court he goes to.
Meanwhile, the Biden campaign is taking it all in stride. "We're winning the election, we've won the election, and we're going to defend that election," Bob Bauer, one of the Biden campaign's top attorneys, told reporters Wednesday. "So we don't have to do anything but protect the rights of voters and to stand up for the democratic process."
