insiderblmDonald Trump’s campaign has started to throw out what one prominent election law expert called “Hail Mary legal plays” in an apparent last-ditch effort to swing ballot counts back in the president’s favor on Wednesday.
With former Vice President Joe Biden moving closer to capturing enough states to win the election, Trump’s campaign indicated it would protest results in at least three swing states that may partially determine the election’s outcome: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all three of which Trump surprisingly won four years ago, by razor-thin margins.
The president’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, said in a statement Wednesday that the campaign would ask for a recount in Wisconsin, where The Associated Press projected Biden won by some 20,000 votes.
In Michigan, where Biden overtook the president as ballot counting continued Wednesday, the Trump campaign said it planned to file a lawsuit in attempt to stop the state’s ongoing count, claiming without evidence that Republican officials weren’t granted appropriate access to monitoring the process.
“It is very unlikely that the efforts will be successful or even slow down the counting of ballots,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, tells PEOPLE.
Additionally, ABC News reports that Trump’s lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to add the president to a Pennsylvania GOP lawsuit seeking to stop the state from continuing to count mail-in ballots, as early tallies indicate they largely favor Biden, who has increasingly gained on Trump’s dwindling lead in the state.
“Even if lawsuits continue,” Hasen says, “I don’t think they would have much chance of affecting the election outcome or slowing certification, unless some new problems come to light.”
To track reliable, real-time results, PEOPLE is using the data collected by the team at The Associated Press, which emphasizes precision and caution in gathering vote totals across the country.
Biden or Trump will need at least 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidential race. As of Wednesday afternoon, Biden held a 248-214 advantage, according to AP’s projections.
Biden’s projected win in Wisconsin on Wednesday morning narrowed the path for Trump’s re-election hopes, as the state looks to have flipped back to the Democratic Party.
Scott Walker, a former Republican governor of Wisconsin, said on Twitter that the 20,000-vote margin in the state was “a high hurdle” for the Trump campaign to challenge with a recount.
History also indicates a recount there may be futile, Walker noted, as the process has previously only results in a couple hundred votes being changed.
“After recount in 2011 race for WI Supreme Court, there was a swing of 300 votes,” Walker tweeted. “After recount in 2016 Presidential race in WI, [Trump’s] numbers went up by 131.”
In Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court previously ruled on Monday that election officials could continue counting mail-in ballots as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday’s election.
The Midwestern swing state was long expected to be a critical component for either candidate’s path to win the election. However, as Biden racked up projected victories in enough other states, such as Arizona and Wisconsin, and began eyeing potential wins in Michigan and Nevada, election experts say Pennsylvania may no longer be relevant to determining the final outcome.
That means any legal challenges in the state may also be moot, Hasen wrote on his website Wednesday.
“It does not seem that Pennsylvania will be crucial to a Biden electoral college victory and so any litigation over ballots there would not matter,” Hasen wrote.
On Wednesday, Trump and the GOP in Georgia filed yet another lawsuit — this time brought against the Chatham County Board of Elections, claiming that ballots there were being improperly counted. Chatham County encompasses Savannah, which AP projections show is leaning toward Biden as of Wednesday night.
David Shafer, the chairman of the Republican Party, claimed on Wednesday that an “observer” witnessed an “unidentifiable woman mix over 50 ballots into the stack of uncounted absentee ballots,” prompting him to file the emergency petition.
“While at the CCBE’s Elections Facility on November 4, 2020, a GAGOP poll watcher witnessed absentee ballots that had not been properly processed apparently mixed into a pile of absentee ballots that was already set to be tabulated. The proper chain of custody for the ballots was not followed,” the complaint says.
Biden told supporters to maintain “patience” early Wednesday and implored Americans to wait for all the votes to be counted, though he later projected confidence in an afternoon speech.
“I’m not here to declare that we’ve won,” Biden said from Wilmington, Delaware. “But I am here to report that when the count is finished we believe we will be the winners.”
