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Trump’s Election Lawsuits: Where the Court Fights Are Playing Out

Trump’s Election Lawsuits: Where the Court Fights Are Playing Out

The Trump campaign has launched a legal onslaught over vote counts in battleground states that are slipping away from him.

The Trump campaign has filed at least six lawsuits in battleground states since Election Day to challenge the ballot counts. Republican and Democrat activists have also sued, but only a few of the cases may have a real chance to affect the final outcome -- and only if the races remain extremely close. Trump has scored three wins and five losses since Nov. 3. Below is a list of key court cases to watch:

Pennsylvania


With 20 electoral college votes, Pennsylvania is the biggest remaining prize on the map. President Donald Trump cannot win re-election without it, so slowing down the vote count and possibly challenging many of the ballots cast there has been the main focus of his legal efforts so far. The state has already seen its voting practices get challenged all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 4-4 in October to leave intact a three-day extension to receive mailed ballots. Republicans are seeking a reversal of that ruling now that Justice Amy Coney Barrett is on the court.

Court: U.S. Supreme Court

Case Name: Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar, 20-542; Scarnati v. Pennsylvania Democratic Party, 20-574

Status: Appeal of state supreme court decision

Summary: Two groups are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that Pennsylvania cannot count mail-in ballots that arrived up to three days after Election Day but were postmarked by Nov. 3, an extended deadline upheld by the state supreme court. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case before the election but explicitly left open the possibility of doing so after the vote. The Trump campaign filed to intervene in the case Wednesday, which could push the high court to take it up again. On Friday, state Republicans asked the court to order Pennsylvania counties to segregate mail ballots that arrived after Election Day, saying state officials haven’t gone far enough to make sure those votes can be invalidated if the GOP wins the legal challenge. Democrats said Thursday the number of ballots at issue likely would not "be large enough to be decisive in the races for president and House of Representatives.”

Court: Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

Case Name: Donald J. Trump for President Inc. v. Kathy Boockvar and County Boards of Elections, 602 MD 2020

Status: Trump win

Summary: President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee sued Pennsylvania’s top election official, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, claiming she improperly extended the deadline for absentee and mail-in voters to provide any missing proof of identification from Nov. 9 to Nov. 12. They scored a victory on Thursday when a judge ordered Boockvar to segregate mail-in ballots from voters providing identification between Nov. 10 through Nov. 12, saying she would rule later on the validity of the deadline extension.

Court: Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

Case Name: Hamm, Kelly, Allred, Horner, Connor and Hauser v. Boockvar, 600 MD 2020

Status: Trump partial win

Summary: A Pennsylvania state judge on Friday ordered county boards of election in the state to put aside provisional ballots cast on Election Day for voters who also sent absentee or mail-in ballots that arrived on time. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought a group of Pennsylvania Republicans, including Mike Kelly, who was elected to a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, that have been challenging what they believe to be defective ballots. The judge denied a request for a preliminary injunction.

Court: Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Northampton County (Easton).

Case Name: In re: Motion for Injunctive Relief of Northampton County Republican Committee, C-48-CV-2020-6915,

Status: Trump loss

Summary: A judge dismissed a lawsuit Friday which was filed by a group that includes Republican candidates and officials who sought to block election officials in Montgomery County, which is mainly Democratic-leaning suburbs of Philadelphia, from notifying voters and helping them “cure” defective votes. The judge said the suit lacked merit.

Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Case Name: Philadelphia County Canvassing Observation Appeal, 1094 CD 20

Status: Trump win, Democrats have appealed the ruling

Summary: The Trump campaign sued on Election Day, claiming its representatives were being denied “reasonable access” to monitor the counting of votes in Philadelphia because they were kept at a far distance from the process. The suit was dismissed on Wednesday by a Philadelphia trial court, but an appellate court on Thursday reversed that ruling and ordered officials to allow all poll observers to watch the ballot-counting from a distance of six feet. Philadelphia election officials are seeking to appeal that decision to the state’s highest court.

Court: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Case Name: Donald J. Trump for President Inc. v. Philadelphia County Board of Elections, 20-5533

Status: Judge denied request for an injunction, saying an agreement was reached

Summary: The Trump campaign filed an emergency request to stop the county Board of Elections “from continuing to count any ballots so long as Republican observers are not present as required by state law.”

Michigan


Biden is the projected winner of the state’s 16 electoral college votes, according to the Associated Press. The Trump campaign has tried to halt the count, saying it needs more access.

Court: Michigan Court of Claims

Case Name: Donald J. Trump and Eric Ostergren v. Jocelyn Benson, 20-000225-MZ

Status: Trump loss

Summary: The Trump campaign claims it hasn’t been given meaningful access to counting locations to observe the process for opening and tabulating ballots as guaranteed under state law. A judge on Thursday rejected the request, saying “At this point, the essence of the count is completed, and the relief is completely unavailable.”

Georgia


Trump has a lead that is narrowing as more votes are counted. A Democrat hasn’t won a presidential election in the state since Bill Clinton.

Court: Eastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia

Case Name: In Re: Enforcement of Election Laws and Securing Ballots Cast or Received after 7:00pm on November 3, 2020, SPCV20-00982

Status: Trump loss

Summary: The campaign claims a Republican poll observer in Chatham County, which includes the Democratic-leaning city of Savannah, witnessed late ballots being illegally added to a stack of on-time absentee ballots. A judge rejected that assertion, ruling Thursday that “there is no evidence that the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7 p.m. on Election Day, thereby making those ballots invalid.”

Nevada


The Trump campaign held a press conference Thursday announcing it would file a lawsuit alleging 10,000 votes were illegally cast by people no longer residing in the state. Instead, a suit was filed by a group that included Republican officials who claimed “over 3,000 instances of ineligible individuals casting ballots.”

Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada

Case Name: Stokke et al v. Cegavske et al, 2:20-cv-02046-DJA

Status: Trump loss

Summary: The case targeted Clark County, a heavily Democratic area that includes Las Vegas, with two Republican candidates for Congress claiming the election there was “plagued by irregularities.” The Republicans failed to produce evidence of wrongdoing , a federal judge ruled in tossing the suit. If they return “with more evidence,” the judge said, he’d reconsider the case.

Wisconsin


The Trump campaign has said it will seek a recount in Wisconsin, where he trails Biden. The president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, suggested another lawsuit could be filed in the state, claiming “exactly the same thing happened” as in Pennsylvania in terms of denying the Trump campaign access to the ballot count. No suit has apparently been filed, although one Democrat has asked a judge a New York to step into the matter.

Court: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

Case Name: Pierson v. Stepien, 20-CV-9266

Status: Filed Nov. 4

Summary: A Wisconsin woman who voted for Joe Biden asked a federal court in Manhattan to block the Trump campaign’s manager, its lawyer “and any of their agents” from seeking the launch of a recount in Wisconsin, claiming in a lawsuit that a “peculiar” state law allowing any candidate with ample cash to demand a recount has fueled “a scorched Earth tactic to sow discord and paranoia in the fields of Wisconsin.”

(Updates with Nevada suit. )

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