Trump’s legal strategy makes no sense. This is what’s really going on.
The Trump campaign may be pursuing a longshot ploy that is more political than legal in nature. It seems that they may simply hope to delay certain states with Republican legislatures from certifying the vote counts and convince those legislatures to directly appoint Trump electors to the Electoral College instead of Biden electors.
The Atlantic reported an early sign of this strategy in September, when Republican leaders in Pennsylvania admitted discussing among themselves and with the Trump campaign the idea of overriding the state’s election outcome in case it went against the president. With the Trump campaign now seeking to delay the certification of election results under the guise of rooting out supposed election fraud, it’s useful to revisit the potential gambit:
Based on allegations of massive election irregularity and therefore a failed election in a state, Trump would ask that state’s legislature to ignore their state’s popular vote and directly appoint presidential electors in his favor. As a result, those states then would end up sending two competing sets of presidential electors to Congress — one appointed by law according the election results for Biden, but also this additional set of electors appointed after the election by the state legislature for Trump.
So, by dragging out and tarring the election process, the Trump campaign may hope to provide political cover for Republican state legislatures.
So, by dragging out and tarring the election process, the Trump campaign may hope to provide political cover for Republican state legislatures to start considering this gambit — and thus far, Donald Trump, Jr., and some prominent Republican politicians and commentators have urged state legislatures to do so. The Trump campaign’s unsubstantiated public allegations of election already have succeeded in convincing 70 percent of Republicans that Biden’s apparent victory was the result of election fraud or irregularities.
