San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
TRUMP TEAM REQUESTS RECOUNT IN GEORGIA
GOP leaders seek delay of Mich. certification; Pa. judge allows certification
President Donald Trump’s legal team said Saturday that his campaign has requested a recount of votes in the Georgia presidential race after results showed Democrat Joe Biden winning the state.
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Friday certified the state’s election results, which had Biden beating Trump by 12,670 votes out of about 5 million cast, or 0.25 percent. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp then certified the state’s slate of 16 presidential electors.
The statement from Trump’s legal team said: “Today, the Trump campaign filed a petition for recount in Georgia. We are focused on ensuring that every aspect of Georgia State Law and the U.S. Constitution are followed so that every legal vote is counted. President Trump and his campaign continue to insist on an honest recount in Georgia, which has to include signature matching and other vital safeguards.”
Georgia law allows a candidate to request a recount if the margin is less than 0.5 percent. The recount would be done using scanners that read and tabulate the votes. County election workers have already done a complete hand recount of all the votes cast in the presidential race. But that stemmed from a mandatory audit requirement and isn’t considered an official recount under the law.
Trump has criticized the audit, calling it a “joke” in a tweet that claimed without evidence that “thousands of fraudulent votes have been found.” Twitter has flagged the post as containing disputed information.
Votes that hadn’t previously been counted were found in several counties during the audit, which required recertification of the election results in those counties before state certification of the results.
Meanwhile, the heads of the Republican National Committee and Michigan Republican Party issued a joint statement Saturday calling for Michigan’s state canvassing board to delay certification of the results of the election.
The move came the same day that a judge rejected a request by the Trump campaign and ruled that Pennsylvania may certify its election results, and election officials in Wisconsin’s largest county accused observers for Trump of seeking to obstruct a recount of the presidential results.
In the letter — signed by RNC Chairwoman Ronna Mcdaniel, who is from Michigan, and state GOP Chair Laura Cox — the officials ask the canvassing board to adjourn for 14 days and allow for a “full audit and investigation” before they convene to certify Michigan’s election results, a procedural step that is set to take place on Monday afternoon.
“This board faces a stark choice,” the letter reads, citing claims of “numerical anomalies” and “procedural irregularities” that they say would leave “the distrust and sense of procedural disenfranchisement felt by many Michigan voters to fester for years” if ignored by the board.
In a tweet Friday, before the letter’s release, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state suggested such an audit would not be allowed under state law. Michigan law does not allow for the necessary records to be released until after the state certifies the results.
Still, the demand increases the pressure on the two Republican members of the four-member state Board of Canvassers, whose actions Monday could slow down the process of finalizing election results in the battleground state.
In Pennsylvania, officials can certify election results that currently show President-elect Joe Biden Biden winning the state by more than 80,000 votes, a federal judge ruled Saturday, dealing the Trump campaign another blow.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport, Pa., turned down the request for an injunction by Trump’s campaign.in his ruling, Brann said the Trump campaign presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations unsupported by evidence.”
And in Wisconsin, election officials accused observers for Trump on Saturday of seeking to obstruct a recount of the presidential results, in some instances by objecting to every ballot tabulators pulled to count.
Trump requested the recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties, both heavily liberal, in hopes of undoing Biden’s victory by about 20,600 votes.
With no precedent for a recount reversing such a large margin, Trump’s strategy is widely seen as aimed at an eventual court challenge, part of a push in key states to undo his election loss.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters on Saturday continued to gather at “Stop the Steal” rallies in various cities, including Sacramento and Atlanta.
In San Diego, about 150 people demonstrated in front of the County Administration Center downtown, waving flags and chanting “Four more years.” They exchanged barbs occasionally with passing motorists and cheered when other drivers honked in signs of apparent support.
The Stop the Steal participants claim the election was rife with fraud and that Trump is the legitimate winner, despite Biden’s lead of more than 6 million votes nationally. The U.S. government last week said there has been no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities, and that this election was the most secure in American history.