A judge in Michigan dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit on Thursday afternoon (Nov. 5), following the lead from Georgia. Trump’s campaign sued the two states and Pennsylvania on Wednesday (Nov. 4) while attacking the integrity of their voting process.
In Pennsylvania, however, the Associated Press reports that Trump’s campaign won an appellate ruling that will allow campaign and party observers to be closer to election officials while they process mail-in ballots. On Tuesday (Nov. 3), an observer from Trump’s campaign complained that they could not get close enough to election workers to see the writing on the mail-in ballot envelopes or to ensure the validity of the voters’ signatures and addresses.
“We will literally be going through every single ballot,” Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Jason Miller, said.
Speaking with CNN, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro brushed the lawsuit off as “more [of] a political document than a legal document.”
“There is transparency in this process. The counting has been going on,” he said. “There are observers observing this counting, and the counting will continue.”
In Michigan, Trump’s lawsuit accused Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of allowing absentee ballots to be counted without a team of bipartisan observers present. However, the Associated Press reports that both Democrat and Republican poll watchers were plentiful at one of the polling sites in question — the TCF Center in Detroit — on Tuesday. Both lawsuits called for a temporary halt in ballot counting until the campaign is given “meaningful” access at polling locations.
“I want to emphasize that for their purposes these lawsuits don’t have to have merit,” Biden’s campaign attorney Bob Bauer said Thursday. “That’s not the purpose… It is to create an opportunity for them to message falsely about what’s taking place in the electoral process.”
Trump’s campaign has also announced their intention to request a recount in Wisconsin, which AP called in Biden’s favor on Wednesday.