Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could fight for the election in court

As The Guardian reported, Trump's allies in the state of Georgia have passed new rules for the Electoral College that allow members to delay certification of the election due to unspecified investigations into voting discrepancies.

In Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, the GOP is pushing to purge voter rolls, according to the Washington Post, even though that is not allowed at the federal level in the months before the election. Republicans in Nevada have also filed suit to prevent mail-in ballots from being counted if they arrive after Election Day. However, the legal basis for the lawsuit has been repeatedly dismissed by courts in the past, the newspaper noted.

“In the swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, there are now about 70 election objectors and commissions tasked with counting the electoral votes. And there have already been about 20 cases where officials have refused or delayed certifying the results in the last election,” David Driesen, a law professor at Syracuse University and author of the book “The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power,” told Business Insider.

“So Trump will claim some kind of election fraud and then try to get the officials who believe him to delay or prevent the certification of the election results,” Driesen said.

Jonathan Diaz, director of voter advocacy at the Campaign Legal Center, told BI he expects numerous litigation related to the election, “as has unfortunately become the norm.”

Before the 2020 election, he said, there was a spate of litigation over polling places and mail-in ballots just before Election Day. But since 2020, there has been a shift toward challenges to post-election processes and lawsuits over the counting of votes and the certification of official results.

A revived election denial strategy

As concerns grow over certification challenges and voter roll purges, Harris' campaign has beefed up its team of senior lawyers to prepare for its court appearance, The New York Times reported.

The expected legal disputes, which mainly concern delays in confirming the results and questions about the vote count in the swing states, could mean that Harris will not be able to claim the electoral votes she won, said Driesen.

“Or at least in the chaos of litigation, it could end up in the House or the Supreme Court – which is in Trump's pocket,” Driesen told BI. “I think that's the strategy: They're trying to prevent the certification of Harris' victories in the swing states where there are significant numbers of disenfranchisement voters. And sometimes they might also try to get state legislatures to certify alternative slates, using the impossibility of certification as an approach.”

Both Diaz and Driesen pointed out that Trump was trying to challenge the legal outcome of the 2020 election and that the democratic system worked as intended then. In more than 60 challenges to the 2020 election results, judges from across the political spectrum – including some appointed by Trump himself – roundly rejected Trump's claims of voter fraud, and President Joe Biden's victory was ultimately affirmed across the country.

Diaz said the lawsuits filed so far by Trump-aligned groups have largely been inconclusive and he hopes the democratic system will once again reject Trump's false claims of fraud. But the lawsuits themselves remain dangerous.

“Even if these efforts are ultimately not legally successful in removing people from office or influencing election processes, they contribute to a really dangerous public narrative of misinformation about election security and election processes,” Diaz said. “They help lay the groundwork for future efforts to overturn election results that don't turn out the way these people want.”

Representatives from the Trump campaign and Harris' legal team did not immediately respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.