Donald Trump is down but not out. His strategy is to hang on like a limpet to his office: He is doing so by insisting on recounts in key battleground states and filing multiple lawsuits.
One of these barrage of lawsuits is proposed in Nevada, which could hand Joe Biden the presidency should he win its six electoral votes.
Trump is essentially demanding that the nation should stop counting votes in the presidential election. Similar legal action is contemplated in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia as Biden approaches the 270 electoral vote threshold. The plea for recount is on one pretext or the other.
In Michigan, for instance, he claims his poll observers have not been given proper access to the count, and is suing to have the count stopped until they are given access.
In Pennsylvania, Trump is claiming that the Senator has given Biden back-door votes to try to push him out. He is also seeking to intervene in an ongoing Supreme Court case involving the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
A part of the problem is that Trump's own Republican Party made it more difficult for candidates to get a recount in Wisconsin and Michigan after his narrow 2016 win.
‘‘Stop the count,’’ Trump tweeted on Thursday morning. ‘‘Any vote that came in after Election Day will not be counted,’’ he later added to his Tweet. The White House official handle had not tweeted since November 3 and Trump had not posted one for more than 11 hours. In fact, with just five states left to be called in the US presidential elections, there's an uneasy kind of quiet at the White House. Trump has spent the last few days holed up in the White House, hobnobbing with advisers,
As weary Americans wait, the militant Trump supporter was coming out of the woodwork. In Arizona, armed pro-Trump protesters descended on a counting centre, after Biden's commanding 200,000-vote lead was reduced to just 68,000. They had a face-off with the police and security, chanting that every vote should be counted. At least one person made it inside, forcing the centre to close with staff locked in.
Adopting different tactics, Trump protesters also surrounded an election centre in Detroit where they called on the count to be stopped as the state was declared for Biden.
To reach the magic figure of 270 to claim victory, Trump, 74, must win all four remaining battleground states: Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada. Biden’s route is easier: Nevada's six electoral votes would put him exactly at 270 – the magic number -- handing him the presidency. Nevada, where Biden leads by less than 8,000 votes, is expected to release another tranche of votes later. Georgia and Pennsylvania are also expected to release additional vote counts.
Media sources said Trump has falsely claimed the postal ballots votes are illegitimate because they are being counted after the election. The votes were legally cast before Election Day but the process to count mail-in ballots takes longer as they have to be checked against voter rolls to confirm it’s a legal ballot from a registered voter – just as when someone who votes in person has to confirm their identity with a poll worker before receiving a ballot. But there is no point telling that to the die-hard Trump supporter.
(Input Daily Mail).
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