Trump to send lawyers in key state Pennsylvania the minute voting ends: 'We're going in the night'
President Donald Trump on Sunday, November 1, rubbished reports that he will announce his victory in the presidential election prematurely on Tuesday, November 3, night if it appears that he is ahead of his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, even if a ton of electoral college votes are not known.
Speaking to reporters after he reached North Carolina for the third rally of the day, the Republican leader said it was a false report but cautioned that he was ready to send his lawyers to key states like Pennsylvania to dispute ballots. “We’re going in the night of - as soon as the election is over - we're going in with our lawyers,” he said. Pennsylvania remains key to Trump's chances of getting a second term in the White House. He became the first Republican leader to win the state after 1988 when he defeated Hillary Clinton by a wafer-thin margin.
In September, a number of ballots cast in favor of Trump were allegedly found in a trash bin, bolstering the Republican leaders’ claim that mail-in ballots are going to see a less transparent election. Trump and the GOP have been launching lawsuits in states that are extending the deadline to accept the mail-in votes. “If people wanted to get their ballots in, they should have gotten their ballots in long before that,” Trump, 74, said. The maverick president has also warned in the recent past that Americans might have to settle for a long legal dispute over the results of the election. He has been repeatedly stressing that the results should come out on the night of November 3, saying: “I don't think it's fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election.”
Three persons told Axios in a report that was released on Sunday that the president privately discussed in detail the potential situation that could unfold on November 3, including walking up to the podium and announcing his victory before the results came out officially. It is possible that some states will not know which candidates are pocketing their electoral college votes on Tuesday as several voters have cast their ballots by mail in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that has affected more than nine million and claimed over 230,000 lives so far.
Results are not officially known on election night
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday that “elections have never been called on election night”. She added that some states allow service members deployed abroad have a week after Election Day to cast their votes. While it is not unlikely to see Americans knowing the winner of the presidential election on the night of the election, it is more based on news outlets’ projections. The actual counts of the elections take some time.
Trump and his team are all set to claim that mail-in ballots counted after November 3 will make the election fraud evident and will target the opponents, accusing them of trying to steal the election. Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s campaign communication director, said: “This is nothing but people trying to create doubt about a Trump victory. When he wins, he's going to say so.” The Supreme Court has given the ruling that Pennsylvania and North Carolina can count their mail-on votes in the days following the election, which also means that the name of the actual winner is unlikely to be known by Tuesday evening.