I don’t see that President Trump has a path legally with these election lawsuits: Political Correspondent
Jon Ward, Yahoo News Senior Political Correspondent joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss the latest on the 2020 presidential election.
Video Transcript
AKIKO FUJITA: As we continue to track the results here, the Dow now up 500 points roughly. The Dow, the NASDAQ, and the S&P all up handily as they pace for their best week in seven months. All of that despite the fact that we are still waiting for a winner in the presidential election.
Some key swing states remain to be called, but that could change within the next few hours. We’re going to be watching some of those key states there. We did hear from Joe Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, saying today that it may take some time to see full voting results in Arizona and that the margin in this state may tighten. That is one that we have heard from the president’s camp, as well.
Let’s get right to the very latest here. We’ve got Jon Ward, who is a Yahoo News senior political correspondent. And Jon, I know you’ve been looking at a number of these legal cases that have been playing out here. We’re talking about Arizona here with the very latest comments from Joe Biden’s camp, but what specifically do you see as the path for the president at least in these legal challenges?
JON WARD: With President Trump, I don’t see a lot of a path, legally. I believe a judge in Georgia has already thrown out a case there. The only lawsuit that I think might have substantive impact is one in Pennsylvania that has to do with what I think are about 100,000 mail ballots at this point. The state– it could go up a little bit, but I don’t anticipate it going up by more than that.
Basically, any mail ballot that arrived after 8:00 PM on Tuesday, if it’s postmarked by that time or does not have a postmark, it can be counted up until Friday at 5:00 PM. And so Republicans have already been trying to get that decision reversed. It was approved by the Pensyl– Supreme– Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They wanted the Supreme– the US Supreme Court to overturn that. It did not. They’re hoping that with Justice Barrett on the court, she might cast a tie-breaking vote in that issue.
But, again, this is out of about 2.6 million mail ballots cast in Pennsylvania. It’s probably about 100,000 or so mail ballots that fall into this category. That could make a difference if the case– if Pennsylvania’s vote count is within that margin. But that is really the only lawsuit that I’m aware of. And I– I’m– it’s possible I’m missing one, but I’ve looked at most. And that’s the only one that I see that could have a really substantive impact potentially on the [AUDIO OUT].
ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, Jon, because you’re talking about these slim, razor-thin margins when we’re looking at some of these key states right now, and it seems like Georgia is going to be falling into that camp as we continue to tally the votes. The lawsuit there that was dismissed was really centered around about 53 ballots.
The Trump campaign in their suit kind of claim that it was, you know, raked into legitimate ballots there in terms of absentee ballots. And when we look at that, I mean, obviously, 53 is going to matter. But it seems like the judge, in throwing that suit out and his ruling, was saying that there wasn’t truth to what that campaign was claiming there.
And I mean, Akiko, when we look at it, obviously, everyone wants to have these votes counted. But it seems like the updates we keep getting from officials in these key battleground states say, you know, it’s going to take us some time. We just need to wait and see. And you want that process to play out.
AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, exactly. And we should be very clear that this is how the process plays out. This year, of course, there’s more attention placed to it because there were just so many mail-in ballots as a result of the pandemic. So a lot more transparency in what’s happening. We’re learning a lot more about the process after Election Day.
But as we said even before the election, patience is going to be key, because in many cases, including Pennsylvania, we may not get a total result until at least the end of the week. And then you’ve got these legal challenges moving forward. So a protracted race– we talked about this before, and it certainly appears as though that is playing out.
