[News] Trump tries to undermine democratic process at the end of the campaign

[S e u o n g]

 

President Donald Trump is casting doubt on the integrity of vote counting and warning he will deploy squads of lawyers when polls close on Tuesday, as his latest attempts to tarnish the democratic process deepen a sense of national nervousness hours before Election Day.

The President's maneuvering, as he fights to the last moment to secure a second term, is taking place ahead of a court hearing in Texas Monday morning on a Republican request to throw out 127,000 drive-thru votes in a key county. The case is one of a growing number of GOP legal gambits to jam up vote counting or reject ballots and comes amid new concerns that the Postal Service, after reforms initiated by its new pro-Trump CEO, may struggle to deliver a deluge of mail- in ballots before counting deadlines.
Fears are also growing that the President might try to declare victory before all the votes are counted as he and Democratic nominee Joe Biden launch a final-day swing through the battleground states that will decide one of the most crucial elections in modern US history. Their sprint is taking place as the coronavirus pandemic - that Trump has denied and downplayed - begins to rage out of control across most of the country. The situation further complicates life for millions expected to head to polling places on Tuesday to join the record 95 million citizens who have already cast an early vote.

 

Biden is leading in national polls and by a narrower margin in many key states and has multiple paths to victory. Trump's route to the required 270 votes is thinner but still viable, meaning either candidate could win. Trump's campaign is counting on a surge in Election Day turnout from his supporters to fuel the President's path to reelection.
In an extraordinary departure from American political tradition, Trump has been arguing for months that the election is "rigged" against him, has made false claims that mail-in voting is corrupt and has refused to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power.
On Sunday, the President stoked fears of a disputed election that could have corrosive long-term effects by raising the false argument that results not declared on an election night were somehow illegitimate. Many US elections have gone past midnight on Election Day. It is common for some states to take several days to finalize vote counts.

 

"I think it's a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election," Trump said in the crucial state of North Carolina, which he is battling to keep in his column despite demographic changes that give Democrats hope.
"I think it's a terrible thing when people or states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over because it can only lead to one thing, and that's very bad. You know what that thing is. I think it's a very dangerous, terrible thing, "Trump told reporters.
In another ominous comment, the President said that as soon as voting was over in states like Pennsylvania, "We're going in with our lawyers," after railing against a Supreme Court decision that left in place for now a decision by Pennsylvania's top bench to allow the counting of ballots up to three days after Election Day.
Elections are, however, not decided by time limits - they depend on all the votes being counted. Some states and counties do not start counting mail-in votes until Tuesday, and in many cases the process is more complicated than counting in person ballots, meaning that the post-election period will be protracted. Some of the most crucial battlegrounds, like Pennsylvania and Michigan, have warned it could be several days before a final result can be declared.

 

In the latest high stakes legal imbroglio, a federal court in Texas will hear a suit filed by a group of Republicans to invalidate nearly 127,000 ballots at drive-thru facilities in Harris County, a heavily Democratic area that surrounds Houston. The Texas Supreme Court denied a similar petition on Sunday. The showdown is taking place against a backdrop of a dramatic Democratic push to capture Texas, a long-term Republican bastion, without which the President almost certainly couldn't win a second term.
Also in Texas, the FBI has opened an investigation into a caravan of vehicles driven by Trump supporters allegedly harassing a Biden-Harris campaign bus on Friday.
In a separate vote counting case in Nevada, a judge is set to rule Monday on a GOP lawsuit seeking to halt early counting in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, over the stringency of signature-matching computer software and how closely observers can watch votes being counted.
Concern over premature victory declaration
As the election nears, concern is growing about what could be a chaotic and confusing election night - given the unusually high proportion of early and mail-in votes owing to the pandemic.
Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said on "State of the Union" that she was concerned that Trump could try to declare victory in her state if Election Day voting tallies showed him with a lead before early and mail-in votes were counted.
"I think that's a very real possibility and that's why we are trying to make sure that everyone in the press understands the volume of votes that are coming in is like nothing we've ever seen before and it is going to take time to count, "she said.
"And it's more important that we get a count that is accurate than a count that is fast and might not be accurate."
A Trump campaign advisor told CNN's Jim Acosta on Sunday that his team will not hold back on claiming a win if it looks like the President is heading for victory, looking at the "current count" and "remaining count" of ballots on election night.
Just because a candidate declares victory it does not mean the election is over, but such a move could be used to create a false political reality to build momentum behind subsequent legal challenges. The President has already said he expects the election to end up in the Supreme Court, and rushed to get Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett confirmed before the election to bolster the conservative majority on the top bench.

The virus that dominated the election is tightening its grip
Tuesday's moment of destiny will unfold as the novel coronavirus emergency surges out of control all over the nation, in the wake of record daily infection rates and with the number of deaths climbing toward 1,000 per day.
The President on Sunday night hinted that he could seek to dismiss Dr. Anthony Fauci after the election after rejecting the admired infectious diseases specialist's science-based recommendations on the pandemic.
Biden will campaign Monday in Ohio - a late addition to his target list - and Pennsylvania, the state of his birth that could be the tipping point if the election is close. Trump will mount a hectic trip aboard Air Force One through North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in a last-ditch effort to save states he won four years ago and block Biden's route to the White House.
Biden argues that Trump's denial and neglect of a pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans and is getting worse by the day should deny the President reelection.