On November 7, 2020, Joe Biden became the unofficial President Elect of the United States. The word “unofficial” has become necessary because, despite the fact that Biden has earned well over 270 electoral votes, President Trump has filed a series of lawsuits in states across the country in order to eliminate some of Biden’s votes. The Trump campaign claims that it is “prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated.” So far, the campaign has filed over 11 lawsuits across Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan, but they have been unsuccessful in causing any votes to be thrown out yet. 

The lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Georgia have been very similar so far. In both states, the campaign claims that votes were submitted and counted after the time that they were due. While the decision in Pennsylvania is still pending, a judge in Georgia ruled that the Trump campaign did not present enough evidence to throw out any votes. It is unknown at this time how many votes would be thrown out if the Pennsylvania lawsuit is ruled in Trump’s favor, but the Supreme Court did rule that a number of contested votes should be segregated in case Trump does win the suit. Also in Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit claiming that votes should be thrown out because election observers were not allowed to stand close enough to vote counters. While the court ruled that the observers could stand closer to the counters, no votes were thrown out because of that decision.

In Arizona, the Trump campaign is claiming that many Republican voters were given Sharpies and other ink-heavy pens instead of regular pens to fill out their ballots. The lawsuit claims that these Sharpies could bleed through the ballot paper, which caused voting machines to think that the voters had voted for more than one candidate. This mistake would result in their ballots being thrown out. However, the idea that these Sharpies were even handed out in the first place has been disproven by the Department of Homeland Security. While an official decision has not been reached yet, it is unlikely that a ruling in Trump’s favor would significantly change the President’s chances of winning in Arizona.

In Nevada, Republicans filed a lawsuit claiming that a signature-authenticating machine that was used by the state’s most Democratic country was malfunctioning. They could only provide one person who was harmed by this mistake, and it was revealed in court that the witness’ vote was counted. However, the witness did have the chance to submit a new ballot, but she did not. Another lawsuit was filed by Republicans last week which claimed that thousands of people were illegally voting in Nevada elections from outside Nevada, but the Wall Street Journal reported that many of these people are in the military and can therefore vote from outside the state’s boundaries.

Finally, the Trump campaign filed two lawsuits in Michigan that failed. The first lawsuit claimed that observers were not allowed to watch the sorting of absentee ballots. This suit was denied because the campaign could not provide any evidence for their claim other than a picture of a sticky note at one polling site. The other lawsuit was filed last week in which Republicans claimed that they were being excluded from participating in the process of fixing ballots that could not be read by ballot scanners. This lawsuit was dismissed because the Republicans proved no evidence for their claim.

The Trump campaign and Republicans in general have been extremely aggressive in pushing these lawsuits ever since the election results were unofficially announced. However, even if the remaining lawsuits succeed and result in a large number of votes being thrown out, it is unlikely that they will change the winner of the election.