Trump’s chances of winning the Presidential Election through legal action

Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, November 18th, 2020 - 19 comments
Categories: democracy under attack, democratic participation, Donald Trump, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, uncategorized, us politics - Tags:

For political legal tragics like myself there is this amazing website Democracy Docket which collects Court filings and reports on the various cases that Donald Trump and his mob are conducting to try and overturn the clearly expressed will of the majority of the American people.  The founder, Marc E Elias, should take a bow because the site, and the Democrat response to the myriad of cases, is impressive.

Some of the arguments are the sorts of arguments you would expect to see from year one law students who have yet to realise that words do have meanings.  Like this one from Georgia where the Republicans tried to get all votes for certain, suprisingly heavily democrat, counties from being counted.  The basis was problems with the tabulating machine and four cited instances of possible voter fraud.  Based on these rather tenuous claims they tried to get 786,000 Democrat votes thrown out.

The Democrat response was as brutal as I have read in any court submission, and stated that the claim was simply not plausible.

From the submission:

Plaintiffs’ Complaint asks this Court to selectively disenfranchise over two million Georgia voters living in several of the state’s most populous counties—counties that did not ultimately support Plaintiffs’ preferred presidential candidate—based on entirely unsupported voter fraud conspiracy theories. Plaintiffs’ implausible allegations are based exclusively on a few isolated, unsubstantiated calls to a voter hotline (the very definition of hearsay), citations to fringe news articles, disproven studies, and projected expert analysis that has not yet actually been prepared (and is itself contingent upon data that the Complaint acknowledges has yet to be finalized or obtained). Plaintiffs ask the Court to take them at their word that this speculation and imaginary expert analysis will, upon “information and belief,” eventually support their extraordinary and highly implausible allegations. None of this is sufficient to invoke this Court’s jurisdiction or state any recognized or plausible federal cause of action.

This case presents neither a cogent nor cognizable legal theory. To the extent Plaintiffs allege any injury, it is not sufficient to support standing. It is political theatre, pure and simple, part of a broader and deeply troubling effort presently playing out on a national stage, to attempt to use the judiciary to cast doubt on the outcome of the presidential election. Every other court confronted with these efforts has properly rejected them. This Court should do the same and dismiss Plaintiffs’ Complaint.

The Republicans then filed applications seeking extensive discovery.  Given that Georgia is in the midst of a recount under very tight time frames this would have caused extensive disruption to the recount.  In a further filing the Democrats said this:

Georgia is in the midst of an unprecedented manual recount of its nearly 5 million ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election, which is the first statewide manual recount of paper ballots in Georgia’s history. Weary election officials—having just successfully overseen an election with record voter turnout—now must orchestrate and implement a novel process to count these 5 million ballots by 11:59 P.M. on Wednesday, November 18. The logistical challenges facing election officials would be extraordinary even under ideal circumstances. Fulton County, for instance, needs at least 300 people working 10-hour days to finish its manual recount of 528,000 ballots before Wednesday.

Against this backdrop, and based on the flimsiest of “evidence” attached to the verified  Complaint, such as citations to fringe news articles and disproven studies, Plaintiffs contend there was massive fraud in the 2020 Georgia presidential election. Plaintiff then posit that this massive fraud entitles them to a Court order authorizing immediate, carte blanche discovery of a breathtaking amount of information from the counties by November 18, while the counties are in the midst of recounting millions of ballots and certifying their election results, and to a trial on the merits the week of November 23.

Never mind that Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Secretary of State, has publicly rejected allegations of widespread fraud; that Geoff Duncan, the Republican Lieutenant Governor, says there are no credible examples of voter fraud in Georgia; that Brian Kemp, the Republican Governor, tweeted regarding the recount, “Georgia’s election result will include legally cast ballots – and ONLY legally cast ballots. Period”; or that the Department of Homeland Security called the 2020 presidential election “the most secure in American history.”

Plaintiffs nonetheless contend that massive fraud has occurred under these officials’ collective noses—fraud that Plaintiffs claim unidentified experts will unearth, using unknown and unspecified methods, as soon as the counties interrupt their ongoing recount to provide Plaintiffs with volumes of unidentified and unspecified documents and information.

The Republicans gave up and filed a voluntary dismissal.

It is not as if Georgia has an electoral system that heavily favours the Democrats.  The Republican finger on the scales is pretty evident.  As an example they have a law that requires the order of electors to list on the ballot paper first candidates of the political party of the Governor who coincidentally is a Republican. Expert analysis shows that the first listed candidate on the ballot receives additional votes solely due to their ballot position and this must be in breach of the concept of one person, one vote.

There were also the incredible purge of Georgia’s roll which disenfranchised many black Americans.  This is third world banana republic stuff.

Trump and Co have so far won one and lost 24 cases in court.  Their ratio shows no signs of improving.

And hold your hats but Rudy Guiliani is seeking to represent Trump in Pennsylvania.  The details of the case are in this Guardian article:

A major law firm withdrew overnight from a Trump campaign case in Pennsylvania seeking to have mail-in ballots thrown out, in the latest blow to the president’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election result in court.

The Ohio-based Porter Wright Morris & Arthur firm, which brought a suit on Monday alleging that the use of mail-in ballots had created “an illegal two-tiered voting system” in the state, abruptly withdrew from that case in a memo to the court.

“Plaintiffs and Porter Wright have reached a mutual agreement that plaintiffs will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws,” the memo said. The lead lawyer in the case, the Pittsburgh-based Ronald L Hicks Jr, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The news was first reported by the New York Times.

To win Trump needs to succeed in multiple courts in multiple cases.  With the Georgian Republican Party saying the election process was fair and with lawyers bailing left right and centre it is very clear he is going to fail.

19 comments on “Trump’s chances of winning the Presidential Election through legal action ”

  • Comments are now closed

  2. Maurice 2
    18 November 2020 at 9:55 am

    It is all about playing to his supporting base and convincing them that the election of Biden is "illegitimate" so that they will oppose this election of a Democrat administration just as vehemently as the Hilary supporters did the Republican for the last four years.

    When 73 million people are led to believe that they have been "cheated" peace and unity cannot prevail.

    • Andre 2.1
      18 November 2020 at 11:14 am

      Methinks you give the orange unrestrained ego ego with surprisingly stubby fingers too much for anything beyond his personal self-gratification.

      Continuing to "fight" is consistent with continuing to grift his marks for more money. Like he's doing with his "Election Defense Fund" that sends 60% to his personal PAC slush fund and 40% to the RNC, until a donor gives more than $8000 when a bit of the donation starts trickling into the fund it was ostensibly donated for.

      It sets him up to continue playing the victim doing rallies in front of adoring MAGAmorons – which appears to be about the only bit of presidenting he enjoyed. Perhaps I'm unfair, hanging out with authoritarian dictators seemed to get him off, too.

  3. dv 3
    18 November 2020 at 10:03 am

    Read a piece about a us red state where patients with covid are dying, still believe covid is a hoax.

    Reported by nurses, can't find the link

  4. mickysavage 4
    18 November 2020 at 10:28 am

    Adam Klasfeld is also live tweeting court proceedings.

    https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1328772267493515266

  5. Andre 5
    18 November 2020 at 10:57 am

    Recorded some moments before Giuliani's entrance to the case …

    OK, OK, many many moments, but still …

  7. Andre 7
    18 November 2020 at 11:54 am

    As anyone who has ever parented an overexcited tantrumping toddler knows, when things go quiet is when you really need to go check out what's happening behind that door.

    The muddled asshole yearning to scream free has been ominously quiet and low visibility these last few days. Ominously so, even considering the all-caps wee hours twitter flatulence. Feels like the lawsuits might be the distraction his minions are putting up …

  8. Macro 8
    18 November 2020 at 4:51 pm

    Trump and Co have so far won one and lost 24 cases in court.

    But on Tuesday in the Philadelphia Supreme Court:

    Philadelphia election officials did not improperly block Donald Trump’s campaign from observing the counting of mail-in ballots, the Pennsylvania supreme court ruled on Tuesday, a major blow to the president’s alreadyflailing legal efforts.

    The decision is significant because one of the Trump campaign’s loudest claims since the election has been that they were improperly blocked from observing the counting of ballots in Philadelphia.

    While campaign observers were always allowed to observe, the campaign alleged they were being kept too far from the counting – about 15-18ft – to make any meaningful observation. It secured a court order in the days after election day requiring Philadelphia officials to let observers within 6ft.

    But the Pennsylvania supreme court reversed that decision on Tuesday, noting that Pennsylvania law gives Philadelphia election officials wide discretion to decide the rules around observers.

    “The board did not act contrary to law in fashioning its regulations governing the positioning of candidate representatives during the pre-canvassing and canvassing process, as the election code does not specify minimum distance parameters for the location of such representatives,” justice Barbara Todd, a Democrat, wrote for the five justice majority.

    “We find the board’s regulations as applied herein were reasonable in that they allowed candidate representatives to observe the board conducting its activities as prescribed under the election code.”

    Even the two Republican justices who dissented from the majority opinion disagreed with the idea, advanced by the Trump campaign, that legitimate votes should be rejected because of improper observation practices.

    “Short of demonstrated fraud, the notion that presumptively valid ballots cast by the Pennsylvania electorate would be disregarded based on isolated procedural irregularities that have been redressed – thus disenfranchising potentially thousands of voters – is misguided,” wrote chief justice Thomas Saylor in his dissenting opinion.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/17/philadelphia-donald-trump-us-elections-2020-joe-biden

    So that is a minus 1 for the Trump team and they are back to zero.

  9. greywarshark 9
    18 November 2020 at 8:24 pm

    Georgia's on my mind after reading that. Any more of this and I'll see if I can get ECT and forget this all ever happened.

    Listen to Trump or Ray Charles. I know who holds the winning card. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIp9TwSEgFg

  10. Gyrogearloose 10
    21 November 2020 at 9:42 am

    Well things have taken an unexpected turn…

    "Gov. Tom Wolf unilaterally decertifying every voting machine in the Commonwealth,"

    Tom Wolf being the Democratic gov of Pennsylvania.

    https://www.abc27.com/news/us-world/politics/election/state-government-committee-to-hold-virtual-hearing-on-voting-machines/

    • Andre 10.1
      21 November 2020 at 10:07 am

      How about doing a little fact-checking before posting misinformation?

      Such as, exactly when did Wolf decertify voting machines? (Hint: the info I can find about any such event suggests it happened quite a while ago, not in any kind of proximity to the recent election).

      What kind of actions happened in response to the decertification? (Hint: it seems Repugs didn't want to spend money on replacement machines and systems)

      https://www.dailyitem.com/news/new-voting-machines-to-cost-northumberland-county-962k/article_2694a19a-f4a1-52fe-b294-53033044e44d.html

      https://apnews.com/article/541a2e66a2fc40c5a26c30c5f882e7e8

      It’s really very simple.

      When you see an interesting but potentially controversial assertion, just open up google and do a little search on the keywords of the assertion. Such as the phrase tom wolf decertify voting machines. Do this before spreading shit around.

      It can save you from looking like a gullible idiot, and even better, it can save you from being a gullible idiot.

      • Dick Michaels 10.1.1
        21 November 2020 at 10:30 am

        He was concerned about the machines in the run up to 2020. Instead of throwing a tanty, how about doing some research?

        • Andre 10.1.1.1
          21 November 2020 at 11:14 am

          In which year were the machines decertified? When you answer, please provide a link for where you get the information.

          Hint; the only decertification event I have found is in response to problems in previous elections conducted with machines that left no permanent traceable record. Hence the directive for the new machines to create a permanent paper record.