US 2020: Trump, Biden may head to court with election inconclusive

 

The outcome of the US 2020 presidential election remains unclear the morning after Election Day, with several battleground states still too close to call.

This is even as the Republican and Democratic campaigns have given indication, they might head to court to resolve issues that have to do with ballot counts.

President Donald Trump said early Wednesday his legal team will be “going to the U.S. Supreme Court,” and that “we want all voting to stop.”

“We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list,” he said, with Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin still undeclared.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign fired back, calling the comments “outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect” and “a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”

“If the president makes good on his threat to go to court to try to prevent the proper tabulation of votes, we have legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort,” said Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon. “And they will prevail.”

All of the states yet to be declared Wednesday morning have seen lawsuits over proposed deadline extensions that would have allowed mail-in ballots to be counted if received after Election Day, Fox News reports.

Pennsylvania, which had been predicted to be a potential key state, could remain undeclared for days, if not longer. Too many mail-in ballots remain uncounted with several counties waiting until Wednesday to tally them. At daybreak, President Trump held a substantial lead over Joe Biden, but Democratic officials were confident that would change.

“When all the votes are counted Vice President Joe Biden is going to win Pennsylvania and be well on his way to necessary electoral votes to win the Presidency,” Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., tweeted early Wednesday. “It’s going to take time and we all need to exercise patience.”

Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani disputed this in an early morning tweet, pointing to how Trump was leading Biden by roughly 700,000 votes at the time.

“It is a lie that it is too close to call,” Giuliani said.

READ: Touch the ballot box and be jailed 20 years

Pennsylvania’s votes will likely not be tallied for several days, as predicted by Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar. While most states began processing early votes in advance, Pennsylvania does not begin the counting process until Election Day itself. The state is currently allowing mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day (and those without postmarks) to be counted until Friday, but ballots received after Tuesday will be segregated until the Supreme Court determines how they should be handled.

Republicans are in the process of challenging a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that granted the three-day extension for mail-in ballots. They also filed lawsuits Tuesday over whether voters whose mail-in ballots were disqualified should have been permitted to submit a provisional ballot, and whether officials in Montgomery County acted improperly by letting voters fix problems with their mail-in ballots before Tuesday.

It remains possible that none of these lawsuits will matter, depending on the results of the total vote count. The difference between Trump and Biden could end up being greater than the number of ballots in dispute.

But Pennsylvania is just one state that hangs in the balance where legal battles are either expected or already underway. The Trump and Biden campaigns have assembled armies of attorneys to wage war in cases.

In North Carolina, which was also too close to call early Wednesday, a deadline extension for mail-ballots allowed votes to be counted if they are received by November 12. Nevada, also still up in the air Wednesday morning, allows ballots to be received until November 10.

Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Maine — which all remained undeclared Tuesday night — kept Election Day deadlines for accepting mail-in votes, but not without legal challenges that sought extensions. Minnesota also segregated late ballots during a battle over a seven-day extension, but the Fox News Decision Desk projects Biden to win that state.

These battles and others could mean the country may not learn the ultimate outcome of the election for weeks. Trump appeared to grow impatient early Wednesday.

“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said, calling the delays a “fraud.”

The Biden campaign pushed back in a statement of their own.

“Donald Trump does not decide the outcome of this election. Joe Biden does not decide the outcome of this election. The American people decide the outcome of this election. And the democratic process must and will continue until its conclusion.”