US Election: Donald Trump’s claims of poll fraud lack evidence

Experts say Donald Trump has little chance of reversing Joe Biden’s win without having provided evidence of widespread vote fraud.

Election employees organise ballots at the Allegheny County elections warehouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the weekend. Picture: Getty Images

Minutes after US media declared Democrat Joe Biden victor in the tight race for the US presidency on Sunday, Donald Trump rejected that conclusion, saying he would prove in court that he was the winner.

“The simple fact is this election is far from over,” the US President said in a statement. “Legal votes decide who is president, not the news media.”

But experts say Mr Trump has little chance of reversing Mr Biden’s win, without having provided the evidence of widespread vote fraud needed to overturn ­results in several states.

“Trump’s litigation strategy is going nowhere. It is not going to make a difference to the election outcome,” said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.

Mr Trump said his campaign would take to the courts on Tuesday AEDT to “ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated”.

He pointed to expected recounts in states where Mr Biden is only a few thousand votes ahead. And he referred to Pennsylvania, where Republicans allege fraud and say thousands of late-arriving mail-in ballots were illegally counted.

“Networks don’t get to decide elections. Courts do. Courts set aside elections when they are ­illegal,” Mr Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city.

There is a precedent for a turn to the courts. In 2000, with the election battle between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore hinging on the outcome in Florida — where Mr Bush led with just over 500 votes — the two sides fought to the ­Supreme Court over a statewide recount. The court narrowly ­rejected a recount, handing the election to Mr Bush. In Trump’s case, he not only has to overcome a deficit of nearly 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania, but he is also down by many thousands of votes each in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.

It’s highly unlikely the ­Supreme Court would move to overturn election results of those margins in multiple states.

Recounts are expected in Wisconsin and Georgia, and are possible in other states. But recounts rarely reverse verdicts. A recount in Wisconsin in 2016 netted 131 votes to Mr Trump’s lead over Democrat rival Hillary Clinton.

“In modern American elections, recounting almost never changed results by more than a couple hundred votes,” said ­Steven Huefner, an election law expert at Ohio State University.

The Trump campaign’s biggest hope has been to overturn a Pennsylvania decision months ago to accept mailed ballots ­received up to three days after election day. Republicans appealed the decision to the ­Supreme Court last month, which split four-four leaving it in place, but saying it could revisit the issue after the election. Now it has a full bank of nine judges after Mr Trump appointed conservative Amy Coney Barrett, and Republicans are seeking a new hearing.

But Pennsylvania officials say the number of late ballots at risk of being disqualified is only in the thousands, much fewer than needed to overcome Mr Biden’s lead.

It is “difficult to see how the ballots in question will have any relevance to the electoral outcome”, said Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar in a ­Supreme Court filing on Saturday.

Mr Giuliani said that the largely Democrat-leaning city of Philadelphia “has a sad history of voter fraud”, claiming dead ­people submitted ballots. “There certainly is enough evidence to disqualify a certain number of ballots,” he said. “And that could affect the election.”

But the Republican claims ­remain “vague”, Professor Huefner said. “You have to have facts to support what you are claiming,” he said.

AFP