11 November 2020 01:30 am Views - 956
Donald Trump has been drumming up doubts, especially among his Republican supporters, about the integrity of the electoral system
The question of whether Trump can challenge the results and seek a recount is a matter that must be first contested at the respective State Courts
Court cases are not something new to Donald Trump. From the inheritance case that he fought for his father’s
Donald Trump has been drumming up doubts, especially among his Republican supporters, about the integrity of the electoral system, many months before the actual vote in the presidential race in November 2020 began. The Trump campaign was particularly irked that some States run by the Democrats had, at the last moment, decided to extend time limits normally allowed to receive mail-in ballots. In fact, Donald Trump’s legal team led by Rudy Giuliani had attempted to get such extensions cancelled by lawsuits in the State courts, but had failed. Yet this does not mean his chances of legally challenging the result, which the major media networks, universally labelled by Trump as the‘fake news media’, called as a Biden victory.
Flood of lawsuits
Much will be written on the political dynamics of US Presidential Election as well as how US citizens have assessed Donald Trump’s first term performance. But this column will discuss the inevitable Trump brand that he has stamped throughout the entire election campaign, and his last-bid attempts to salvage re-election chances. Many legal pundits, again quoted by mainstream media, see the attempted multiple lawsuits by Trump Lawyers as an attempt to delay the final decision of the election with the hope of finding something major by way of an irregularity that would hold in court. Yet as we have seen so far from the Presidential Election, the mainstream US media is lopsidedly biased against Trump, and many pollsters repeatedly cited by the networks had projected a Biden landslide,which was woefully wrong once again.
The question of whether Trump can challenge the results and seek a recount is a matter that must be first contested at the respective State Courts and then, if the case might be, at the Supreme Court. At present the US Supreme Court comprises a majority of conservative justices, three of whom were appointed by President Trump during his tenure, including the most recent Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Yet some feel she might recuse herself from the case if the lawsuits make it to the Supreme Court. But this is only guesswork.
Widespread Fraud?
According to Rudy Giuliani, there is widespread fraud by the Democratic Party-run election apparatus in battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.He cried foul that almost a hundred poll observers were denied access to counting offices,especially even after a court order, for the remaining part of the counting in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Trump team is ready to make dozens of those persons testify before court in their attempts to prove a strong case of voter fraud.
Republicans also charged that thousands of dead persons’ names had appeared in voting lists under mail-in ballots, where the voter does not come in person, and that scores of people who had died long ago—including celebrity Will Smith’s father—had been recorded as having voted.This buoys Trump’s hopes of getting equitable relief from courts which could include recounts, re-canvassing, annulling or even a re-election.An army of over 12,000 Lawyers are reportedly rallying nationwide—some voluntarily—for the Republican cause, signalling a nationwide, protracted and grinding legal battle the likes of which have never been seen in US history. The magnitude of lawsuits will dwarf the Gore vs Bush battle for electoral seats in Florida in 2000.
Dead Man Voting!
In addition to allegations of mail-in votes and dead people voting, there is some doubt regarding the mathematical aspect of some results. For example, in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, where by the late hours on election night President Trump was leading by almost 900,000 votes with 90% ballots reportedly counted—a major lead for US Presidential Elections seen as mathematically insurmountable—the lead had whittled down in a remarkable fashion by dawn. Democrats and the mainstream media attributed the shift to large chunks of mail-in ballots, which disproportionately lean towards Biden, coming in late, as opposed to in-person votes which had come in first and given Trump the lead. Yet the admittedly unnatural manner in which the lead dwindled and disappeared had been challenged by the Trump team, and will be a hotly contested issue in a prospective lawsuit.
Going by the character of Donald Trump and his history as a razor-sharp, competitive and successful business mogul, who has litigated extensively throughout his entire business life, and who claims to have never lost, he would not concede victory to Joe Biden no matter what the numbers suggest and despite almost all the major networks including CNN, NBC and even Fox News calling it for Biden. In a press release in the wee hours of election night,Trump was resolute in going for legal battles to the bitter end. For Trump there is no difference between those commercial and business legal suits that he contested in courts, and the one now looming, challenging the results of the US Presidential Election. Despite some of his own advisers and Republican Party bigwigs requesting him to concede,Trump will take this to the bitter end.
A nation split in half
As the incomplete and unofficial election results show,the US is a deeply divided nation. The Democrats’ hope of the election result being a sweeping repudiation of Trump’s brand of politics has not become a reality. The Democrats could not flip some Senate seats as expected and polls had suggested.In reality the Republicans could win quite a number of Congress seats in down-ballot voting, demonstrating that Trump has made the Republican Party stronger in volatile States. That hundreds of Republican supporters gathered to accost some counting centres which they suspected were engaged in election fraud shows the deep divide in the US polity has grown much deeper,and has split the vote in half.
Although it is alarming and quite disturbing to those Americans who take pride in the US legacy of being the beacon of modern electoral democracy with the right to dissent and freedom of expression as well as entrenched civil liberties irrespective of race, colour or creed, Trump appears undisturbed. divisive, competitive and cut-throat battles have been his bread and butter since his younger days, and being in the White House has not blunted that street fighter spirit. In fact, it has been sharpened.
The coming days will show which of the two candidates has the fortitude to withstand the pressure of the election result of the US Presidential race getting delayed, under the glaring media cameras of the entire world.