Despite Trump’s venting and threats, Biden’s win is sealed

There’s plenty of noise but no cause for confusion as President Donald Trump vents about how the election turned out and vows to subvert it even still.

This truth is self-evident: Joe Biden is on track to become president Jan. 20. The machinery of government and democracy is moving inexorably toward that end despite Trump’s attempts to undermine the voters’ will.

Trump on Wednesday demanded an “OVERTURN” of the outcome in a collection of tweets arguing he could only have lost the election if it were “FIXED.” He attempted to support his case by saying odds-makers on election night heavily favored his reelection, “the so-called ‘bookies,’” as if a gambler’s bet mattered. It doesn’t.

Americans who don’t wish to get caught up in the nitty gritty of Trump’s attempts to undermine the election can take their cue from one of the many judges who have dismissed the complaints of his team or his allies that the voting or counting was corrupt.

“This ship has sailed,” said U.S. District Judge Linda Parker in throwing out a lawsuit challenging Biden’s win in Michigan this week.

Not only has the ship sailed but it has reached safe harbor and dropped anchor.

Biden’s victory was essentially locked in Tuesday by the so-called safe harbor deadline set by federal law for states to finish their certifications and resolve legal disputes. It’s an insurance policy to guard against Congress trying to manipulate the electoral votes that will be cast next week and sent to the Capitol for counting on Jan. 6.

These steps — the deadline, the convening of the Electoral College in state capitals, Congress’ count in early January — are rituals that are routinely ignored by the public at large. They became less ignorable when Trump began exploring any and all avenues to stay in power.

But the election is over and has been for weeks. Here’s why:

• Biden won a decisive majority of electoral votes in states that certified their results.
• The Democrat is set to finish with even more electoral votes, 306, a total Trump called a landslide when he won the same in 2016.
• No systemic fraud or even consequential error has been established in an election that state monitors and courts have repeatedly found was run fairly. More than that, the election played out with striking efficiency given that it was held in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
• Trump’s attempts to browbeat Republican officials in Georgia and Michigan into upending Biden’s victory in those states came to nothing.
• Trump’s legal arguments in favor of overturning the result have been shredded by judges across the country, including by some he appointed and hoped would therefore side with him.
• Trump reshaped much of the federal bench with his own nominees during his term and placed three justices on the Supreme Court. None of that has helped him reverse his defeat by Biden.
• Altogether, Trump’s campaign or his allies have seen more than 35 of their court cases fail. Trump has won one, concerning deadlines for proof of identification for certain absentee ballots and mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, and it did not change the outcome.
• This week the Supreme Court turned aside a bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Trump now says his campaign will join a case in the Supreme Court led by the Texas attorney general, who bases the case on false and unsupported allegations that have been discredited in other courts.
• Even as Trump cries foul over Biden naming his Cabinet and other senior personnel, the Trump administration is working with the incoming Biden administration on the transition. Republican lawmakers are adjusting to the transfer of power while still declining for the most part to acknowledge Biden’s victory out loud.

Trumps string of losses in court bids to challenge the election results continued Wednesday when a federal judge threw out a lawsuit that sought to decertify Biden’s win Trump in Arizona, marking another failed attempt to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.

Judge Diane Humetewa said Wednesday that the lawsuit’s allegations “are sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence” and that the relief it sought was extraordinary. “If granted, millions of Arizonans who exercised their individual right to vote in the 2020 General Election would be utterly disenfranchised,” Humetewa wrote.

The judge found the proposed Trump electors who filed the lawsuit lacked legal standing to bring the case, waited too long to file their challenge on issues that occurred months and even years ago, and failed to provide proof to back up their fraud claims.

The decision came a day after the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a separate bid by state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward to undo Biden’s victory.

The challenge dismissed by Humetewa alleged the state’s election systems have security flaws that let election workers and foreign countries manipulate results and that those systems switched votes from Trump to Biden.

Attorneys for the state’s election officials have said the lawsuit uses conspiracy theories to make wild allegations against Dominion Voting Systems, one of Maricopa County’s vendors for voting equipment, without providing proof to back up its claims of widespread Arizona election fraud.

Humetewa said the lawsuit doesn’t contain a plausible allegation that Dominion voting machines were hacked in Arizona during the Nov. 3 election, noting the proposed Trump electors “have not moved the needle for their fraud theory from conceivable to plausible.”

No evidence of voter fraud or election fraud has emerged during this election season in Arizona.

Former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of proposed Trump electors in Arizona, said she will appeal the ruling.

Similar election challenges filed by Powell were dismissed earlier this week in Michigan and Georgia. Late Wednesday night, a federal judge in Wisconsin dismissed a challenge brought by Powell in that state by a county Republican party chairman.

The Wisconsin lawsuit alleged massive fraud and improper handling of absentee votes and asked the court to declare Trump the winner in that state. U.S. District Judge Pamela Popper, in dismissing the case, said the court didn’t have the authority or jurisdiction to grant such relief.

“Federal courts do not appoint the president in this country,” Popper wrote. “One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so. After a week of sometimes odd and often harried litigation, the court is no closer to answering the ‘why.’”

Separately, Trump has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the Wisconsin vote. The suit was filed by Indianapolis attorney William Bock III and the law firm of Kroger Gardis & Regas, where former Indiana Speaker of the House Brian Bosma, and Indianapolis Republican, is a partner. A hearing in that case is scheduled today after the Democratic National Committee asked the judge to dismiss the case.

In all, seven lawsuits challenging the results of the presidential vote in Arizona have been dismissed, including Ward’s lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s victory.

In Ward’s challenge, the state Supreme Court said Ward failed to prove misconduct or illegal votes and concluded the margin between the two candidates wasn’t small enough to trigger a recount, even with the small number of votes Trump could have lost due to problems in ballot processing. The state’s highest court cited case law that concludes the validity of an election isn’t voided by honest mistakes.

The state’s election results were certified on Nov. 30, showing Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes. The Electoral College is scheduled to meet on Monday.