US election results: Can Trump overturn the outcome? read the latest

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Almost two weeks after Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the US presidential election, Donald Trump is still refusing to concede. Does he have a plan to overturn the outcome?

The president’s legal strategy to challenge the election results seems to be falling on deaf ears in courtrooms across the country. Trump’s team has yet to notch a meaningful victory, or present evidence of widespread voter fraud, after filing dozens of lawsuits.

His top lawyer, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, said on Thursday that the campaign was dropping its legal challenges in Michigan, which Biden won by more than 160,000 votes.

In Georgia, the state has certified its election tabulations, which give Biden just over a 12,000 vote lead after the state conducted a hand recount of nearly 5 million ballots.

As doors to remaining in office slam shut, the president appears to be shifting strategies for flipping the election results from a longshot legal one to a longer-shot political gambit.

A step-by-step guide to Trump’s strategy

Here’s what he may hope to do:

Block the vote-certification process in as many states as possible, either through lawsuits or by encouraging Republican officials to object
Convince Republican-controlled legislatures in states Biden narrowly won to dismiss the results of the popular vote as corrupted by widespread fraud
Have the legislature then award their state’s Electoral College votes, which are cast by “electors” on 14 December, to Trump instead of Biden
Do that in enough states – Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, for instance – to pull Trump from his current total of 232 electoral votes past the winning 269-vote mark
Even pulling Biden from 306 votes might work, because then the election would be decided in the House of Representatives, where even though it’s controlled by the Democrats, Trump would have an advantage due to some arcane rules

What is Trump doing to make this happen?

He’s applying pressure on people who can potentially change who the states pick for president.

When Americans vote in a presidential election, they are actually voting in a state contest, not a national one. They are voting for state electors who will then cast one vote each for president. These electors usually follow the will of the electorate – in Michigan, for instance, they should all vote for Joe Biden because he won the state.

On Monday, a state canvassing board made up of two Republicans and two Democrats is due to meet to count the votes and officially confirm the 16 electors’ votes going to Biden.

The first hint that Trump was applying pressure to individual states to disregard their current vote totals came following reports that he had called Republican officials who had initially refused to certify the election results from Detroit, Michigan’s largest city.

That two low-level party officials, among thousands of county canvassers across the US, would speak directly to a US president was more than just a little unusual. They ultimately reversed their decision to block the proceedings – and then, after Trump’s call, expressed regret for reversing themselves.

Those hints became clear evidence of intent when the Republican leaders in the Michigan legislature accepted a presidential invitation to visit the White House on Friday.

source: bbc

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