Michigan confirmed United States President-elect Joe Biden on Monday as the winner in the Midwestern state’s campaign field as President Donald Trump’s legal challenges and vote counts continued to leave little chance of the outcome changing.
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers confirmed previous predictions that Democrat Biden beat Republican Trump in the highly competitive race.
With the certification and Michigan’s 16 votes, Trump’s attempt to deny Biden a victory by alleging electoral irregularities and fraud in many states became even less likely.
Michigan Results
Biden beat Trump in Michigan by more than 150,000 votes, or nearly three percentage points, and the electoral authority has to confirm the count.
Trump-supporting poll challengers chant “Stop the Count” outside the door of the polling room after being told to leave the house due to room capacity at the TCF Center after Election Day in Detroit, Michigan on November 4th [Rebecca Cook/Reuters]Trump and his GOP allies urged Republicans to postpone certification. Norman Shinkle, one of the two Republicans on Michigan’s four-person board of directors, had proposed that certification be delayed because of technical irregularities that may have affected a few hundred votes in one county. He abstained from voting on Monday.
The other Republican on the board, Aaron Van Langevelde, said repeatedly during a meeting on Monday that he saw nothing in the law to suggest that the board had any option other than to confirm the results presented to it. “Our duty is very simple and it is our duty,” Van Langevelde was quoted by the AP as saying.
He voted for the certification, which was 3-0.
Pennsylvania legal challenge
Monday is also the Pennsylvania deadline for counties to report their certified numbers to Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat.
Boockvar was then able to certify the results on behalf of the state within a few days. Biden won Pennsylvania by around 81,000 votes, or just over one percentage point.
But Trump’s election campaign on Monday asked a federal appeals court to revive a long-term challenge to Pennsylvania’s election results. Officials should be prevented from declaring President-elect Joe Biden the state’s winner.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, takes a break while speaking during a press conference on legal vote counting challenges on November 7, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [John Minchillo/AP Photo]The lawsuit filed by Trump’s campaign alleged inconsistent handling of postal ballot papers by county election officials.
The campaign is part of a ruling by the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania by US District Judge Matthew Brann.
Brann said in his ruling on Saturday that the case was based on “strained legal arguments” and that he “has no authority to withdraw the right to vote from even one person, let alone millions of citizens.”
Brann also denied the campaign’s motion to include claims in their lawsuit, including allegations that their procedural rights had been violated.
The Trump campaign appeal centers on the narrow question of whether Brann wrongly refused to let her amend her lawsuit a second time.
The Pennsylvania Secretary of State has until Tuesday afternoon to reply. If the campaign loses its appeal, it could ask the US Supreme Court to review the case.
Recounts
The Trump campaign is also challenging results through recounts, in both Georgia and Wisconsin.
Georgia, whose Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed his election results last week, revealed that Biden beat Trump with 12,670 votes out of about five million votes cast, or about 0.25 percent.
Under state law, a candidate can request a recount if the margin is less than 0.5 percent. The Trump campaign on Saturday sent a formal request for a recount to the Secretary of State.
Counties can start the recount at 9:00 a.m. (2:00 p.m. GMT) Tuesday and must finish at 11:59 p.m. on December 2nd (05:00 GMT on December 3rd)Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the new state voting system for the Secretary of State, said during a video press conference Monday.
Sterling also said the secretary of state was still considering whether any type of investigation to verify the signed oaths outside of the Georgian ballot papers was appropriate, but said there was no specific allegation that the signature matching process had not been properly conducted.
Wisconsin’s partial presidential recount began on Monday, day four, with very little change in the number of votes.
Biden won the state by about 20,600 votes, and his lead in the largely democratic counties of Milwaukee and Dane was about two to one. These are the only districts where Trump paid for a recount.
Trump’s lawyers are trying to stop counting postal votes in which voters identified themselves as “indefinitely”. if the information on the certification envelope is in two different colors of ink, indicating that a polling officer may have helped fill it in; and if there is no separate written record for it, including any personal postal ballot papers.
These ballot papers were counted during the recount, but could be targeted as part of Trump’s legal challenge in the state that provides for fraud by mail-in voters, particularly in relation to poll workers helping with ballot completion.
The long-term guidance of the non-partisan electoral commission was that employees can enter missing information if they can reliably determine it. No court has ever declared the practice illegal.
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