Richard L. Hasen writes:

Just count the damn votes.

We are nearing the end of a ridiculous pandemic-laden election season, where we may hit record turnout despite the most blatant attempt to suppress the vote in a generation. More than 90 million people have already voted, and we may reach a record turnout of over 150 million on election day. I am sure we would have exceeded that number by millions more votes if President Donald Trump and Republicans had not fought efforts around the country to make voting during the pandemic a little less onerous.

And with Joe Biden ahead in the polls, the Trump end playbook has become increasingly clear: attack the counting of ballots after election night—even if they’ve arrived by election day—and prematurely declare victory if Trump is ahead—or possibly even close—in the early count. Indeed, Axios reported on Sunday that “President Trump has told confidants he’ll declare victory on Tuesday night if it looks like he’s ‘ahead,’ according to three sources familiar with his private comments.” This is largely in line with Republican lawsuits this election season, including a request over the weekend by Texas Republicans for a federal judge to throw out more than 100,000 ballots, which is likely to fail. Any such effort to continue this ploy after election night would be a disgusting attempted coup to try to stop the counting and manipulate public opinion, but the good news is it is also very unlikely to work. [Continue reading…]