President Donald Trump and his allies are taking increasingly frantic steps to subvert the results of the 2020 election, including summoning state legislators to the White House as part of a longshot bid to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
 
Among other last-ditch tactics: personally calling local election officials who are trying to rescind their certification votes in Michigan, suggesting in a legal challenge that Pennsylvania set aside the popular vote there and pressuring county officials in Arizona to delay certifying vote tallies.  
 
Election law experts see it as the last, dying gasps of the Trump campaign and say Biden is certain to walk into the Oval Office come January. But there is great concern that Trump’s effort is doing real damage to public faith in the integrity of U.S. elections.
 
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics, accused Trump of resorting to “overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election.” Romney added, “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.”
 pic.twitter.com/S3kFsIRGmi— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) November 20, 2020Trump’s own election security agency has declared the 2020 presidential election to have been the most secure in history. Days after that statement was issued, Trump fired the agency’s leader.  
 
The increasingly desperate and erratic moves have no reasonable chance of changing the outcome of the 2020 election, in which Biden has now received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history and has clinched the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win.  
 
But the Republican president’s constant barrage of baseless claims, his work to personally sway local officials who certify votes and his allies’ refusal to admit he lost is likely to have a lasting negative impact on the country. Legions of his supporters don’t believe he lost.  
 
“It’s about trying to set up the conditions where half of the country believes that there are only two possibilities, either they win or the election was stolen,” said Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and professor at Loyola Law School. “And that’s not a democracy.”
 The phrase “Count Every Vote” is projected on a giant screen organized by an advocacy group in front of the State Capitol while election results in several states have yet to be finalized, Friday, Nov. 6, 2020, in Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/David…The two GOP canvassers in Michigan’s Wayne County said in a statement late Wednesday they lacked confidence that the election was fair and impartial. “There has been a distinct lack of transparency throughout the process,” they said. But there has been no evidence of impropriety or fraud in Michigan, election officials have said.  
 
Trump’s allies have homed in on the way that the president’s early lead in Michigan and some other states on election night slipped away as later votes came, casting it as evidence of something nefarious.  
 
But a massive influx of mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic leaned largely to Biden, who encouraged his supporters to vote by mail, and those votes were the last to be counted. So it appeared Trump had an edge when he really didn’t.  
 
In fact, Biden crushed Trump in Wayne County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Detroit, by a more than 2-1 ratio on his way to winning Michigan by 154,000 votes, according to unofficial results.  
 
Earlier this week, the county’s two Republicans canvassers blocked the certification of votes there. They later relented and the results were certified. But a person familiar with the matter said Trump reached out to the canvassers, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, on Tuesday evening after the revised vote to express gratitude for their support. Then, on Wednesday, Palmer and Hartmann signed affidavits saying they believed the county vote “should not be certified.”  
 
They cannot rescind their votes, according to the Michigan secretary of state. The four-member state canvassing board is expected to meet Monday and also is split with two Democrats and two Republicans.
 
Trump appears intent on pushing the issue. He has invited Michigan’s Republican legislative leaders, Senate Majority Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield, to the White House, according to two officials familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. The two have agreed to go, according to one official, but they haven’t commented publicly, and it’s not clear what the purpose of the meeting is.  
 
The Michigan Legislature would be called on to select electors if Trump succeeded in convincing the state’s board of canvassers not to certify Biden’s 154,000-vote victory in the state. But both legislative leaders have indicated they will not try to overturn Biden’s win.
 
“Michigan law does not include a provision for the Legislature to directly select electors or to award electors to anyone other than the person who received the most votes,” Shirkey’s spokeswoman said last week.
 
During a press conference in Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday, Biden said Americans are “witnessing incredible irresponsibility, incredibly damaging messages are being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions.” 
He added, “I just think it’s totally irresponsible.”Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, speaks during a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters, in Washington, Nov. 19, 2020.Earlier, Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and others had held a press conference to allege a widespread Democratic election conspiracy involving multiple states and suspect voting machines. But election officials across the country have said repeatedly there was no widespread fraud.  
 
Many of the allegations of fraud stem from poll watchers who filed affidavits included with lawsuits in battleground states aimed at delaying vote certification. Those affidavits lean into innuendo and unsupported suggestions of fraud.  
 
For example, they refer to suitcases in a polling place but make no suggestion that ballots were being secretly counted. There are allegations of ballots being duplicated — something routinely done when a ballot is physically damaged. There are claims that partisan poll watchers were too far away to observe well and therefore something fishy was probably going on. But they don’t have proof. Poll watchers have no auditing role in elections; they are volunteer observers.
 
Giuliani cited a few sworn affidavits that he said showed a vast Democratic conspiracy, but he added that he could not reveal much of the evidence. One he cited was from Jessy Jacob, identified as a city employee in Detroit who said she saw other workers coaching voters to cast ballots for Biden and the Democrats.  
 
A judge who refused to block certification of Detroit-area results noted that Jacob’s claims included no “date, location, frequency or names of employees” and that she only came forward after unofficial results indicated Biden had won Michigan.
 
Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis, who joined Giuliani, said more evidence would be forthcoming and that Trump’s allies would have more success in courts going forward. But so far, most of their legal actions have been dismissed.
 
Chris Krebs, the Trump administration election official fired last week over the comments about the security of 2020, tweeted: “That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest.”
 
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., tweeted: “Rudy and his buddies should not pressure electors to ignore their certification obligations under the statute. We are a nation of laws, not tweets.”
 
In Pennsylvania, where the Trump campaign is challenging the election results in federal court, a legal team led by Giuliani suggested in a filing Wednesday that the judge order the Republican-led state legislature to pick delegates to the Electoral College, potentially throwing the state’s 20 electoral votes to Trump. A judge canceled an evidentiary hearing in the case.
 The Maricopa County Elections Department officials conduct a post-election logic and accuracy test for the general election as observers watch the test, Nov. 18, 2020, in Phoenix, Arizona.In Arizona, the Republican Party is pressuring county officials to delay certifying results. The GOP lost a bid on Thursday to postpone certification in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous. In northwestern Arizona, Mohave County officials postponed their certification until next week.  
 
Judge John Hannah ruled without explanation, except to bar the party from refiling the case. The judge promised a full explanation in the future.
 
Maricopa County officials are expected to certify elections results on Friday.
 
Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes, and Maricopa County put him over the top. The county performed a hand count of some ballots the weekend after the election, which showed its machine counts were 100% accurate. The same was found Wednesday during routine post-election accuracy tests.
 
In Georgia, where officials have been auditing the results of the presidential race, Trump has repeatedly attacked the process and called it “a joke.”  
 
He has also made repeated incorrect assertions that Georgia election officials are unable to verify signatures on absentee ballot envelopes. In fact, Georgia requires that they be checked.
 
The Associated Press called Biden the winner of Georgia and its 16 electoral votes on Thursday night.  
 
A top Georgia election official said earlier Thursday that a hand tally of ballots cast in the presidential race had been completed, and that the results affirmed Biden’s narrow lead over Trump. The secretary of state’s office planned to release results of the audit later Thursday.  
 
During the hand tally, several counties found previously uncounted ballots that the secretary of state’s office has said would reduce Biden’s lead to just under 13,000 votes, with roughly 5 million total votes cast. Georgia law allows a candidate to request a recount within two business days of certification if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. That recount would be done using machines. 
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday he will not extend several emergency loan programs set up with the Federal Reserve, an action that could hamper the ability of the incoming Biden administration to gain important economic support from the central bank to deal with the ongoing pandemic.The decision drew a terse rebuke from the Fed.The central bank said it “would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.”But in a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, Mnuchin said that the Fed’s corporate credit, municipal lending and Main Street Lending programs would not be renewed when they expire on Dec. 31.Under law, the loan facilities required the support of the Treasury Department, which serves as a backstop for the initial losses the programs might incur.Mnuchin said that he is requesting that the Fed return to Treasury the unused funds appropriated by Congress for operation of the programs.He said this would allow Congress to re-appropriate $455 billion to other coronavirus programs. Republicans and Democrats have been deadlocked for months on approval of another round of coronavirus support measures.In public remarks Tuesday, Powell made clear that he hoped that the loan programs would remain in effect for the foreseeable future.”When the right time comes, and I don’t think that time is yet, or very soon, we’ll put those tools away,” he said in an online discussion with a San Francisco-based business group.The future of the Main Street and Municipal Lending programs has taken on greater importance with President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Many progressive economists have argued that a Democratic-led Treasury could support the Fed taking on more risk and making more loans to small and midsized businesses and cash-strapped cities under these programs. That would provide at least one avenue for the Biden administration to provide stimulus without going through Congress.Neither program has lived up to its potential so far, with the Municipal Lending program making just one loan, while the Main Street program has made loans totaling around $4 billion to about 400 companies.Mnuchin’s move comes as the resurgent virus and slowing consumer spending, as well as colder weather that will shut down outdoor dining, will cause more small and mid-sized businesses to struggle with lower revenue and potentially close.However, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said in a statement that he approved of Mnuchin’s decision.”Congress’ intent was clear: These facilities were to be temporary, to provide liquidity and to cease operations by the end of 2020,” Toomey, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said. “With liquidity restored, they should expire, as Congress intended and the law requires, by Dec. 31, 2020.”
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The director of the Census Bureau said Thursday that irregularities have been found during the numbers-crunching phase of the 2020 census, a development that jeopardizes the statistical agency’s ability to meet a year-end deadline for handing in numbers used for divvying up congressional seats.The Census Bureau was facing a shortened schedule of two and a half months for processing the data collected during the 2020 census — about half the time originally planned. The Census Bureau would not say Thursday what the anomalies were or publicly state if there would be a new deadline for the apportionment numbers.U.S. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham speaks at an event launching the 2020 Census Statistics in Schools program, Oct. 28, 2019, in Memphis, Tenn.”These types of processing anomalies have occurred in past censuses,” Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham said in a statement. “I am directing the Census Bureau to utilize all resources available to resolve this as expeditiously as possible. As it has been all along, our goal remains an accurate and statistically sound Census.”The Census Bureau said it would not comment further.”This is not surprising to me at all,” said Robert Santos, president-elect of the American Statistical Association, in an email. “The notion that the 2020 Census data could be processed in half the time scheduled given all the obstacles & challenges that Census Bureau encountered defies logic.”Those challenges included a pandemic, wildfires out West and hurricanes in Gulf Coast states.Missing the Dec. 31 deadline for turning in the apportionment numbers would be a blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to exclude people in the country illegally from being counted in the numbers used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets and how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed.Once the president receives the numbers by the Dec. 31 deadline, the president has about a week from the start of the next Congress to transmit them to the House. If the Census Bureau delays turning in the apportionment numbers because of the processing problems, that transfer of the numbers could take place after President-elect Joe Biden takes office.A census taker knocks on the door of a residence in Winter Park, Florida, Aug. 11, 2020.Trump’s apportionment order has been found unlawful by three courts — in New York, California and Maryland. The Justice Department has appealed to the Supreme Court, which is hearing arguments at the end of the month.Because of the pandemic, the Census Bureau switched its deadline for wrapping up the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident from the end of July to the end of October. It also extended the deadline for turning in the apportionment numbers from the end of December to the end of next April, giving bureau statisticians five months to crunch the numbers.In late July and early August, however, officials at the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, announced field operations would finish at the end of September and the apportionment numbers would stick to a congressionally mandated deadline of Dec. 31.A coalition of local governments and advocacy groups sued, claiming a shortened schedule would shortchange minorities and hard-to-count communities. Their lawsuit also said the schedule was shortened to make sure the numbers-crunching took place on the Trump administration’s watch so that the president’s order on apportionment could be enforced.Jeffrey Wice, an adjunct professor at New York Law School who is an expert in census law and redistricting, said he would not be surprised if the president, in his last weeks in office, installs as the bureau’s head a political appointee “who will do whatever Trump wants him to do.”In the past year, the Trump administration has named a handful of political appointees to the Census Bureau’s leadership team, drawing sharp criticism from Democratic leaders of a House oversight committee and questions about their hiring from the Commerce Department’s inspector general.”That is totally unpredictable,” said Wice, who has worked with the national Democratic Party on redistricting programs.
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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden continues his transition to power, meeting virtually on Thursday with leading state governors even as President Donald Trump continues his long-shot legal efforts to overturn the election results and retain the presidency.Biden, two months ahead of his inauguration on January 20, is meeting with Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and other state leaders from his home city of Wilmington, Delaware.Their discussions are likely to center on Biden’s plans when he takes office to control the surging number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. and what can be done before he starts his four-year term in the White House.Hundreds of thousands of new infections are being recorded in the U.S., with the figure topping 180,000 on some recent days and the death toll now totaling more than a quarter million, the most in any country across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University.Dozens of public health experts on Thursday urged the Trump administration to allow the presidential transition process to officially start to confront the pandemic, giving incoming Biden officials access to information the Trump administration has compiled about medical supplies and the vaccines that are being developed. Preventative shots may soon be available for the most vulnerable Americans.The health officials’ letter was written to Emily Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration, who has yet to sign paperwork declaring that Biden had won the election so the transition can officially start.“In light of the public health crisis facing the nation, it is imperative that you ascertain Joe Biden as President-elect immediately under the Presidential Transition Act,” they wrote, adding: “Doing so will enable the incoming Biden team to liaise with key health officials in the Trump Administration and prepare a robust, coordinated response to the pandemic.”But to date the country’s 45th president has refused to concede defeat to the prospective 46th chief executive after their bitter, months-long election campaign. As a result, Trump has kept Biden from seeing government intelligence about national security threats the U.S. might be facing or granted Biden aides access to a long list of government agencies.The Republican Trump is clinging to the hope that he yet can overturn the results in a handful of battleground states that Biden won and retain the presidency, even as national news media say that the Democrat won well more than the 270-majority in the 538-member Electoral College that is determinative in U.S. presidential elections, not the national popular vote, which Biden also won.Trump has lost numerous lawsuits claiming voting and vote-counting irregularities, and final vote tabulations are upholding Biden’s victories in key states.The southern state of Georgia has completed its recount, which cut Biden’s advantage from slightly more than 14,000 votes to 12,781 after it was discovered that some ballots in two Trump-leaning counties had not originally been counted. But Biden is still projected to win the state’s 16 electoral votes.Staying at the White House without venturing out for public appearances, Trump said on Twitter, “Thousands of uncounted votes discovered in Georgia counties. When the much more important signature match takes place, the State will flip Republican, and very quickly. Get it done!”Thousands of uncounted votes discovered in Georgia counties. When the much more important signature match takes place, the State will flip Republican, and very quickly. Get it done! @BrianKempGA— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2020He complained, “Almost ZERO ballots rejected in Georgia this election. In years past, close to 4%. Not possible. Must have signature check on envelopes now. Very easy to do. Dems fighting because they got caught. Far more votes than needed for flip. Republicans must get tough!Almost ZERO ballots rejected in Georgia this election. In years past, close to 4%. Not possible. Must have signature check on envelopes now. Very easy to do. Dems fighting because they got caught. Far more votes than needed for flip. Republicans must get tough! @BrianKempGA— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2020The Trump campaign withdrew a lawsuit against officials in the Midwestern state of Michigan that sought to stop the state from certifying its election results, which showed Biden winning by 155,000 votes. The lawsuit dealt with minor issues that would not have overturned the statewide result and did not provide proof of fraud. 
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