US president Donald Trump has launched a series of legal challenges to halt voting in marginal states. While Democratic hopeful Joe Biden has declared the counting will not stop.
Associate professor Tim Kuhner from Auckland University, a specialist in the law of democracy, says Trump is executing a long-standing plan.
Photo: AFP
“Trump had already promised, or should I say threatened, to deploy the power of the Supreme Court to accomplish something that I would call election rigging.
“Which would be to challenge the validity of mail-in ballots that were cast in a lawful manner, but Trump will retrospectively seek to have them not counted or nullified.”
The Supreme Court has jurisdiction over cases involving the states, he told Jesse Mulligan, and is already involved in a number of cases.
“On the 19th of October it issued an order in the Pennsylvania case which did allow ballots to be counted for another three days for the election.
“But several of the justices vowed to revisit the issue if it became vital after the election. So, there is the potential for the Court to actually intervene to stop the counting in Pennsylvania.”
Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh has parroted Trump’s own arguments for why the Court needs to be involved, Prof Kuhner says.
“It said the Court has an interest in avoiding the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.
“But we shouldn’t be talking about flipping the results, the results haven’t been completed yet.”
The next few months will be crucial, he says.
“It’s going to test the integrity of the three supreme court justices that Trump has appointed.
“The Court can adopt a new doctrine of judicial interpretation of the power of states to hold elections, and it can insist that only those methods adopted literally by the legislature, not the Governor, not by referendum, not by a state Supreme Court, but only those adopted specifically by the legislature …. only what the legislature has done is constitutionally valid.
“And that could be a grounds for actually reversing some of the really important measure that were undertaken during Covid to make sure so many millions of people could vote without endangering themselves or others.”
Chief Justice John Roberts is an unknown factor, he says.
“He has been a disappointment to Trump and a number of Conservatives because he’s finding his own way.
“Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Thomas are endangering the integrity of the court by threatening to invalidate ballots that were lawfully cast at the time, that were cast and mailed prior to election day but that under state law can’t counted until election day or after election day.
“And some of those state rules have been set by Republican governments in the states and so there is an intentional move to make the mail-in ballots, less effective and to cue up the kinds of challenges that Trump is now orchestrating.”
This is a all part of a long-standing plan, he says.
“Trump appointed his Post Master General, one of his larger campaign donors, Louis DeJoy and he slowed down the Post Office essentially.
“The mail in ballots are running slower than they would otherwise run, and they are being counted later than they could otherwise be counted, and it just cues up this situation where Trump can stand back and say ‘hey they are going to flip the outcome of the election, this is a fraud on the American public’.”
