The Trailer: The election’s over, but the challenges aren’t quite

“This election was rigged,” the president said Sunday morning, in a friendly and at times indulgent interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. “This election was a total fraud.”

Did you miss something while cutting turkey? Yes, but mostly, no. The president has not yet conceded defeat, days after allowing President-elect Joe Biden to officially start his transition. Supporters inside his party, from Congress to state legislatures, continue to suggest that courts could toss out enough ballots for Trump to stay in office, even after dozens of legal defeats.

Most of the doors have closed on the challengers already. Results were certified in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania over the past 10 days; they’re scheduled to be certified in Arizona and Wisconsin this week. While 21 more states have yet to certify their results, none have ongoing election contests, serious or otherwise. The election is over, but the president’s supporters are still mounting challenges. If you logged off for a few days, here’s what you missed.

Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign’s highest-profile lawsuit was dismissed Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, with Trump-appointed judge Stephanos Bibas leading a unanimous panel of three judges in rejecting the Trump team’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud.

“Calling an election unfair does not make it so,” the panel wrote. “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

One day later, the state Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, which argued that the state’s GOP legislature violated the Constitution when it expanded absentee voting and that therefore ballots cast with that method shouldn’t be counted. As absurd as it sounded, the lawsuit excited Trump’s team after one conservative judge cited it to defend an injunction against the state certifying its election results — a signal, they hoped, that the court might rule for the plaintiffs. But that judge was out on a limb. 

“The want of due diligence demonstrated in this matter is unmistakable,” the court ruled, pointing out that several elections had been held under the rules being challenged. “Millions of Pennsylvania voters had already expressed their will in both the June 2020 Primary Election and the November 2020 General Election and the final ballots in the 2020 General Election were being tallied, with the results becoming seemingly apparent.”

The two defeats, 24 hours apart, cleared out the docket in Pennsylvania; counties have now certified their vote totals. But the Trump campaign continues to suggest it could bring a case to the Supreme Court, and a rump of conservative Republicans are trying to overturn the election, though they lack the votes (or evidence) to do so. State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the backer of a resolution that would void Biden’s win, said in a Friday Newsmax interview (shared by the Trump campaign) that “constitutionally, we [state legislators] have the final say in who the electors are” and that the basis for a challenge would be the stories of poll watchers whose claims of voter fraud have not held up in court. 

Mastriano has become a fount of misinformation, sharing then repeating the falsehood that just 1.8 million absentee ballots were sent to Pennsylvania voters. But Trump has sounded confused about what’s being challenged, too; in the Sunday morning interview, he struggled to explain what had happened to Kelly’s lawsuit.

“He has a great case,” Trump told Bartiromo. “Well, he had a good decision, then he went a step above, and they turned him down. I think that was in Pennsylvania.”

Wisconsin. The Trump campaign paid for recounts in the state’s two biggest Democratic counties, Milwaukee and Dane, which have been plowing through ballots ahead of the state’s Dec. 1 certification. The Milwaukee recount wrapped up Friday, with Biden gaining 132 votes over Trump; the Dane County recount finished Sunday, with Trump gaining 45 votes over Biden. As expected, the count barely changed anything.

The president reacted to the Milwaukee news by reiterating the GOP’s strategy in Wisconsin: to mark enough ballots as flawed, by any means whatsoever, to sue for a halt to the certification. “The Wisconsin recount is not about finding mistakes in the count, it is about finding people who have voted illegally, and that case will be brought after the recount is over, on Monday or Tuesday,” Trump tweeted. “We have found many illegal votes.”

That’s not an accurate description of the recount, but the meaning depends on how you read the word “illegal.” Republicans are arguing that absentee ballots dropped off in person shouldn’t count, and throwing out that many ballots would allow the party to argue that the true winner in Wisconsin is unknowable. Democrats expect a lawsuit to make that argument, and they expect it to fail.

Georgia. The taxpayer-funded recount, demanded by Trump’s campaign, is underway, with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger predicting that it won’t substantially change the certified results: a Biden win of more than 10,000 votes. That’s because the hand audit that led to certification, which The Trailer witnessed in one county, already did what the Trump team is demanding: put monitors in secure rooms, with public observers watching, and have them count everything by hand.

But Georgia is ground zero for the most fanciful set of election challenges — the baseless allegations, from former Trump legal team member Sidney Powell, that software used by the state allowed pro-Biden “ballot-stuffing.” In a filing this week, Powell, who had described her evidence as “biblical” and compared its release to that of the Kraken in “Clash of the Titans,” argues that Dominion, the election vendor used by the state, was “founded by foreign oligarchs and dictators to ensure computerized ballot-stuffing and vote manipulation to whatever level was needed.” 

There’s no hearing scheduled for this challenge, and Powell’s choice of metaphor has been ominous: The Kraken is remembered for its size as much as for the ease with which Perseus killed it. But it’s worth taking the president literally as well as seriously when he talks about what he wants to see courts do and which conspiracy theories he’s willing to embrace. On Fox News on Sunday, Trump endorsed one of Powell’s baseless ideas — that the Dominion machines actually send votes to be counted on overseas servers — and suggested that some lawsuit, eventually, would get before the highest court and give him the presidency.

“Something has to get up there,” Trump told Bartiromo. “What else is the Supreme Court for?”

The day-by-day story of a doomed election contest.

The diverse down-ballot picture for both Democrats and Republicans.

How to get conservatives excited about an election without admitting they lost the last one.

Why a high-profile hearing offered much less than promised.

What do fired-up activists do with a Congress that’s got fewer Democrats than they expected?

How party leaders are navigating around their angry base.

A crucial swing vote that doesn’t always get attention from the major parties, but did in 2020.

American Crossroads, “Calling.” Like Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who held off on attacking the Rev. Raphael Warnock until the runoff began, super PACs that held their fire are now going negative on the Democratic nominee. “With Warnock attacking the police, it’s no wonder the far left is bankrolling him,” a narrator says. The ad points to Warnock’s endorsements from Democracy for America and MoveOn as evidence that he’s the candidate of the defund-the-police movement, a common tactic deployed this year against Democrats who had said they disagree with that slogan.

Raphael Warnock, “What They Are.” The Democrat tried to preempt negative ads and opposition research with an ad that showed him playing with a cute dog, to dramatize what people would soon be saying about him — i.e., that he hated puppies. He’s returned to the theme after three weeks of ads about his sermons, portraying him as a radical leftist. “You would think that Kelly Loeffler might have something good to say about herself if she really wants to represent Georgia,” Warnock says. “Instead, she’s trying to scare people by taking things I’ve said out of context from over 25 years of being a pastor. But I think Georgians will see her ads for what they are.” To dramatize this, he cleans up after the dog.

David Perdue, “Even Stronger.” The Republican senator’s advertising has alternated between hard swipes against Democrat Jon Ossoff and straight-to-camera testimonials of what he thinks can be done with a businessman at the table in Washington. Since his 2014 win, Perdue says, Americans “built the greatest economic turnaround in U.S. history,” pre-covid, and will “come back even stronger.” The ad eschews the “save America” tagline for one not many incumbents would think to use: “The original outsider.”

We still don’t quite know the makeup of the next House of Representatives, but we’re getting close. In Iowa’s 2nd District, a recount ended with Republican nominee Mariannette Miller-Meeks up by six votes. That may be enough to get the race certified this week, but it represented a shift of a few dozen votes toward Democrat Rita Hart since before the recount, and Hart’s campaign told the Des Moines Register that it would “closely review what the county and state boards do on Monday with an eye toward making sure all Iowa voices are fully and fairly heard.”

That’s still more clarity than we’re getting from New York’s 22nd District, where unofficial results have Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi up by fewer than 100 votes, but Republican Claudia Tenney hasn’t conceded, and there are eight days before the state certifies its numbers. There are 12 days left before California certifies its vote; in the 25th District, Republican Rep. Mike Garcia leads by around 400 votes, but there are, in theory, enough uncounted votes to deliver an unlikely comeback to Democrat Christy Smith.

… one day until Arizona’s election certification deadline
… two days until Wisconsin’s election certification deadline
… six days until runoffs in Louisiana 
… nine days until the “safe harbor” date for states to choose electors
… 16 days until the electoral college votes 
… 37 days until runoffs in Georgia 
… 52 days until the inauguration