Will courts back Trump’s call to „STOP THE COUNT“?
This morning, Fox reports that Team Trump will announce a voter-fraud lawsuit in Nevada, a state that halted its reporting yesterday morning. It’s the third state so far in which the campaign will ask for court intervention: Ric Grenell, the former acting Director of National Intelligence, is slated to hold a Thursday morning press conference in Las Vegas to announce the Trump campaign is filing a lawsuit that seeks to count every “legal” vote. The Trump campaign is alleging that at least 10,000 people voted in the state, despite no longer living there. At least this says that the campaign wants votes counted, albeit restricted to only the “legal” votes. Trump’s message this morning was a bit more broad: STOP THE COUNT! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5,2020 Before we get to the legalities, the messaging here is a bit… weird. If we “stop the count” in place as it stands, that would make Joe Biden president,270-268, based on winning Nevada and Arizona. In fact, Republicans are reportedly demonstrating in Arizona and chanting “Count the Votes!” Trump needs the vote counts to continue in those two states, even as he might be getting a bit nervous about the counting in Pennsylvania and Georgia. And how healthy will it be for Republicans to embrace a “stop the count” message in the future, anyway? Will courts back Trump’s call to “STOP THE COUNT”? Jonathan Turley thinks they might in Pennsylvania because of the unique issues presented in that state — and an earlier Supreme Court punt on them. These are “categorical” issues, such as postmark and signature enforcement based on statute, and Turley thinks that the Trump team does have a case based on the statutory requirements being waived by the state in its counting process: Andy McCarthy thinks there’s a case in Pennsylvania, too: As repeatedly recounted (most recently, in Wednesday’s column), the state supreme court, by fiat, ordered a the three-day extension of the November 3 Election Day deadline for the state’s receipt of mail-in votes — i.e., until close-of-business November 6. I believe this was an unconstitutional usurpation of the state legislature’s power to set the rules for elections.
