As with this year’s election of the next US president, the “most divided” America was talked about twenty years ago – and just as this year, it did not bring a clear winner the morning after the election night. The US Supreme Court had to decide when the election would end, and current US President Donald Trump admitted that he would turn to him as well.
It was the morning of December 12, 2000, and the United States had finally learned who would rule them. No famfars, five weeks after the election and from an unexpected place: the majestic buildings of the Federal Supreme Court. He halted the recount in controversial Florida, and with just 537 votes, Texas Governor George W. Bush Jr. became the 43rd president.
“Honestly, we are now laughing at the whole world. We look like a third world country that cannot choose a leader, “commented one of the American voters at the time. Another added that every vote should be counted and that did not happen. “I consider it unfair.”
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And just like twenty years ago, the best lawyers on both sides are mobilizing on this side immediately after the elections. Fearing a pandemic, a record nearly 102 million – nearly half – American voters sent their votes by mail this year. And one of the candidates, President Donald Trump, repeatedly challenged it.
In a short speech from the White House, he declared himself the winner at night and advised legal action over alleged election fraud. “We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find more voices at four in the morning and count them, “Trump said.
The staff of Democratic candidate Joe Biden responded that if Trump tried to stop the proper counting of votes from this year’s elections in court, “we have legal teams on hand.”
Earlier, Trump had repeatedly challenged some states’ plans to accept timely correspondence ballots even after the polls closed. He has repeatedly spoken about possible electoral fraud in this context.
The counting of votes usually takes several days
According to the AP agency, it was not clear what legal steps the president could try to take. The night’s vote across the United States is over, and now the votes are just counting. It is quite common in the United States for this process to take many days, with no state accepting correspondence votes sent after Tuesday’s election day.
“There has never been any basis for claiming that a ticket delivered on time could not be counted if the commissioners were unable to complete the census on election night,” commented Richard Hasen, a voting expert.
Another expert and professor at Ohio State University, Edward Foley, added: “Valid votes will be counted. The Supreme Court will come next only if there are voices with debatable validity, which would be decisive, but this may not happen. “
With the push for Amy Barrett just before the election, the ratio of conservative to liberal judges rose to 6: 3 in the US Supreme Court.
Ondřej Preuss from the Department of Constitutional Law, Faculty of Law, Charles University, expects Trump to challenge the results in several states in court. According to him, it will be important from what positions the current president will do it. If the position of the loser is difficult for the court to persuade. If, on the other hand, from a position where it is unclear who won, or where he himself holds a close victory, a complex legal battle can ensue. Then it would be up to the Supreme Court to decide. Preuss assumes that if this court rules against Trump, the president will comply.
He added that Trump had been preparing for this situation for a long time. However, even his colleagues were not able to prove, according to Preuss, cases where there were mistakes in the correspondence vote.
The US Post Office has already processed the delayed correspondence votes
The US Postal Service completed a court-ordered night processing of late correspondence votes. According to Reuters, a spokesman for the post office announced this on Wednesday. A federal court ordered the post office on Tuesday to process any late correspondence votes and deliver them to their destination immediately. The regulation covered about 12 states, including key Pennsylvania and Florida.
On Tuesday, Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the post office to complete the inspection by 15:00 local time (21:00 CET) and confirmed that there would be no correspondence votes left in the sorting rooms by 16:30 local time (22:30 CET). The verdict was issued after voting rights activists from the Vote Forward group and the human rights organization NAACP, which traditionally focuses on defending the rights of African Americans and Hispanics, filed a lawsuit.
According to Sunday’s postal data, there were supposed to be about 300,000 correspondence votes cast without an delivery note, thanks to which it can be confirmed that they were cast by the election commission. The laws allow a ballot to be cast by post without delivery, but some election observers feared that at least some of these votes could be declared invalid due to late delivery.
Trump’s campaign called for a suspension of the Pennsylvania census
US President Donald Trump’s campaign on Wednesday night asked a court to suspend the counting in Pennsylvania. Republican observers reportedly do not have access to the census and want the situation to become clearer. Trump’s campaign also called for a suspension of the census in Michigan; in Wisconsin will want to recalculate the close result.
Deputy Campaign chief Justin Clark said the campaign “filed a criminal complaint against Democrat campaigners for hiding the census process from Republican observers.” The campaign wants the Pennsylvania census to be “temporarily halted until the situation is meaningfully clear and Republicans can be convinced that votes are counted according to the law.”
According to Clark, the campaign will also seek to interfere in the Supreme Court’s decision on the date for the Pennsylvania census. The state has to process 3.1 million votes sent by post and, according to the court, has until Friday. Only those votes submitted to the post office on election day, ie by 3 November, can be counted.
Similarly, due to the allegedly confusing situation, Trump’s campaign called for a suspension of the census in Michigan, where Joe Biden is currently leading and where the winner can win 16 voters.
In Wisconsin, Biden was already declared the winner in the screenings, but with a very close result. According to these figures, he won over Trump by just over 20,000 votes. Trump also won the state very close in the last election in 2016 and had about 22,000 more votes than his rival Hillary Clinton.
Will it come to the Supreme Court?
Constitutional lawyer Marek Antoš from the Department of Constitutional Law, Charles University in Prague, stated that the American system is very decentralized and that each state governs legal review differently. According to him, this is also reflected in the fact that Trump’s campaign with complaints proceeds differently in each state. He thus expects a battle of lawyers in individual states.
He generally thinks that complaints will not just reach the US Supreme Court and will be in the lower courts. He also recalled the case in 2000, where a dispute between Bush and Gor was first decided by a court in Florida, then by the Supreme Court. He decided in a ratio of 5: 4 according to the then “party line”, ie according to which president the judges were appointed. “I don’t think the court at the time can be proud of that,” Antos added. At the same time, however, he pointed out the differences between the situation then (a dispute over hundreds of votes in one state) and today (thousands of votes in several states).
Former Ambassador: Violence and destruction must end
Former US Ambassador to the Czech Republic (2006-2009) Richard W. Graber said of the current difficult US post-election situation that it was actually 50 elections in 50 states. He therefore waits because it will take days, or when a problem arises, weeks before the final results are known.
At the same time, however, he does not think that this is a threat to democracy. “The US has its control processes in place and can handle it.” He acknowledged that emotions are now tense and the country is divided, but he believes in the constitution and in how Americans deal with these things. “We’ll figure it out somehow, even though it’s confusing now and it’s not fun.”
He hopes that the elections will calm down after the elections and that politicians will find some areas on which to agree. For example, education for young people, perhaps better ways to deal with the virus. “Or maybe we will consider foreign policy.” Another thing they should agree on is that there has been a lot of unrest in the US in recent months and that it is unacceptable and that violence and destruction must stop.
Graber also assumes that US-Czech relations will remain friendly and productive, he said in the program Events, Comments.
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