By Zack Huffman
November 17, 2020
Wisconsin
Biden won Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, reclaiming a state that Hillary Clinton narrowly lost in 2016.
Biden held a slim 20,000-vote margin against Trump as of November 16. The state will have a final number once it has been able to complete canvassing, which must be done by November 17. After that point, either campaign can request a recount, assuming the final tally continues to show just a 0.4% lead for Biden.
On November 12, a trio of Trump supporters filed a lawsuit in the Eastern U.S. District Court for Wisconsin. The lawsuit was seeking to exclude votes from Menominee, Dane and Milwaukee counties which are all heavily blue, and are responsible for Biden lead on their own. Those three counties allowed voters to use a mail order ballot that is exempt from the state’s voter ID law, as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19.
Rather than submit evidence of voter fraud, the plaintiffs are seeking extensive registration and election data from the state. They claimed, in their lawsuit, to have “advanced technical capability” to analyze the data for trends that would indicate fraud.
The three plaintiffs dropped their suit on Monday, November 16, after reportedly being told that U.S. District Judge William Griesbach, who was appointed in 2002 by George W. Bush, was planning to dismiss their case.
Nevada
Days after the election, the U.S. District Court of Nevada tossed a suit from the Trump campaign ostensibly on behalf of local voters who challenged the validity of ballots scanned in Clark County. The plaintiffs had previously lost their case at the state superior court level, but appealed those results.
The Nevada Supreme Court dismissed their appeal on November 10 after the plaintiffs failed to obtain all of the required signatures of parties to a proposed settlement agreement that would allow additional campaign observers to monitor the ongoing vote counting in Clark County.
Biden won Nevada’s 6 electoral votes with more than 33,000 votes ahead of Trump, for a 2.4% lead.
Georgia
The Trump campaign abandoned its litigious rebuff of Biden’s apparent win in the Peach State, after its failed lawsuit to halt the counting of absentee ballots in Chatham County was tossed out of court two days after the election.
No further suits have been filed since then, but the Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, ordered a recount, because Biden only held a slight 0.3% lead. The recount is still ongoing as of November 16, though 2,600 additional ballots were reportedly discovered. The discovered ballots favor Trump and will allow the president to gain 800 votes on his challenger, who still leads by about 14,000 votes.