WASHINGTON — The day after the election, the Trump campaign says it has filed lawsuits Wednesday in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, and will ask for a recount in Wisconsin.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden is projected to win Wisconsin with a roughly 20,000 vote lead. No presidential race winner has been projected for either Pennsylvania or Michigan at this time.
The lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania both demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, the campaign says.
“In Philadelphia and elsewhere, Democrat officials forced our observers to stay 25 feet or more from the counting process, leaving no meaningful way whatsoever for our observers to do their jobs,” the statement from Justin Clark, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, reads.
At a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, elaborated on the campaign's legal action in Pennsylvania.
"Not a single Republican has been able to observe these (absentee) ballots,” Giuliani said, adding speculatively, "Joe Biden could have been able to vote 5,000 times, we don’t know."
With about 84 percent of the ballots counted in Pennsylvania, Trump leads Biden by almost 300,000 votes.
The Trump campaign said Wednesday they are also seeking to intervene in a state case at the Supreme Court that deals with whether ballots received up to three days after the election can be counted, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark says.
In the Michigan suit, election officials are asked to stop absent voter counting boards from counting because they are allegedly not complying with a state statute that 1 election inspector from each major political party be present during counting, according to the lawsuit.
It also asks that observers be allowed to view surveillance video of ballot boxes that were in "remote and unattended" locations.
In response to news of the lawsuit, demonstrators went to a building in downtown Detroit trying to get inside to challenge votes being counted.
Hundreds of challengers are already inside the TCF Center, according to WXYZ in Detroit, and those outside are not being let in. The Detroit Health Department says the building is at capacity, and police are enforcing those capacity rules.
Giuliani hinted the Trump campaign may bring a larger lawsuit about issues with observing ballot counting.
"We're going to consider a federal lawsuit. Quite possibly we'll do a national lawsuit and reveal the corruption of the Democratic party," he said. Trump tweeted Wednesday afternoon, without supporting data, that he claimed victory in Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states. He also made unsubstantiated claims about "secretly dumped ballots."
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's office released a statement asserting the state's elections were "conducted transparently, with access provided for both political parties and the public, and using a robust system of checks and balances to ensure that all ballots are counted fairly and accurately."
In Wisconsin, candidates are allowed to ask for a recount if the margin is less than 1 percent. The current margin is roughly .6 percent.
The Trump campaign said they would seek a recount. No word on when that will begin.
The Biden campaign released a statement responding to the lawsuits:
"When Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by roughly the same amount of votes that Joe Biden just did, or won Michigan with fewer votes than Joe Biden is winning it now, he bragged about a 'landslide,' and called recount efforts 'sad.' What makes these charades especially pathetic is that while Trump is demanding recounts in places he has already lost, he's simultaneously engaged in fruitless attempts to halt the counting of votes in other states in which he's on the road to defeat. This is not the behavior of a winning campaign. Plain and simple, Donald Trump has lost Wisconsin, he is losing Michigan, and he is losing the presidency. Put another way, 'It is what it is,” Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said.
