WASHINGTON (AP) – Even before Election Day, the 2020 race was the most litigated in memory. President Donald Trump is promising more to come.
The candidates and parties have enlisted prominent lawyers with ties to Democratic and Republican administrations should that litigation take on a new urgency. A narrow margin in a battleground state could become the difference between another four years for Trump or a Joe Biden administration.
Since the 2000 presidential election, which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, both parties have marshaled legal teams to prepare for the unlikely event that voting doesn’t settle the contest. This year, there is a near presumption that legal fights will ensue and that only a definitive outcome is likely to forestall them.
A Pennsylvania case at the Supreme Court pits Donald Verrilli, who was President Barack Obama’s top Supreme Court lawyer, against John Gore, a onetime high-ranking Trump Justice Department official.
Trump said this weekend he was headed to court to prevent Pennsylvania from counting mailed ballots that are received in the three days after the election. An extension was ordered by Pennsylvania’s top court. The Supreme Court left that order in place in response to a Republican effort to block it.