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Final sprint begins 24 hours to Nov 3 D-day
Despite openly denying reports that he plans to claim victory before election is called, Speculations are rife that President Donald Trump may be lining up legal challenges to vote counts ahead of thr November 3 US presidential election.
This comes on the heels of his blistering final campaign sprint on Sunday, lining up 10 rallies in seven swing states over two days in an effort to defy the polls and replicate his shock election win in 2016.
Reverting to his pre-2016 election theatrics when he threatened to reject unfavourable polls’ results, reports hinted that Trump is planning to declare victory Tuesday, November 2 before the result is called.
Citing three anonymous sources “familiar with his private comments”, the news site Axios said Trump “has told confidants he’ll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he’s ‘ahead’.
“That’s even if the electoral college outcome still hinges on large numbers of uncounted votes in key states like Pennsylvania,” the site said
“Trump has privately talked through this scenario in some detail in the last few weeks, describing plans to walk up to a podium on election night and declare he has won.
“For this to happen, his allies expect he would need to either win or have commanding leads in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona and Georgia.”
Trump denied the Axios story, describing it as false, but then confirmed he would try to shut down vote counting as soon as the polls close on Tuesday.
“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election,” the president told journalists in North Carolina “As soon as the election is over – we’re going in with our lawyers.”
Asked about the Axios report, Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, said: “My response is the President’s not gonna steal this election.”
According to FiveThirtyEight.com, Trump leads in Ohio, Texas and Iowa while Biden is up in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. The races are all exceptionally tight: the biggest lead in the FiveThirtyEight.com polling average is Biden by three points in Arizona, the smallest Trump by 0.2 in Ohio.
Under the Coronavirus pandemic, early and mail-in voting has reached unprecedented levels, fuelling expectations of record turnout but also fears many states will take longer than usual to count their ballots.
Trump’s tactics, Axios said, will depend on continuing to claim without evidence ballots counted after election day are illegitimate and evidence of voter fraud. Vote counting after election day is a regular feature of US elections.
Many of Trump’s claims have focused on Pennsylvania, where the race is close but where votes counted after 3 November are expected to favour Biden who leads most national and battleground polls. Both candidates campaigned heavily in the state this weekend.
“Pennsylvania is critical to this election,” Biden told a drive-in rally in Philadelphia on Sunday evening, describing the president as an obstacle to defeating the pandemic.
“To beat the virus we’ve first got to beat Donald Trump,” he said. “He’s the virus.”
Democrats have long worried that Trump will declare victory early, aiming to sow uncertainty and legal battles over ballots and results. Some observers have called the tactic the “red mirage”, which former housing secretary Julián Castro said this week “sounds like a super villain, and it’s just as insidious”.
“On election night, there’s a real possibility that the data will show Republicans leading early, before all the votes are counted,” Castro said. “Then they can pretend something sinister’s going on when the counts change in Democrats’ favour.”
On Sunday, on CNN’s State of the Union, Biden adviser Anita Dunn said she thought the victor would be known some time on 4 November, the day after election day.
“A lot of the early states that are battleground states, especially in the Sunbelt, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, are states that tend to get their votes counted on election night,” Dunn said. – With The Guardian reports
