Courts have not accepted the Trump team’s allegations of systematic election fraud anywhere in the country, but the president’s ramshackle so-called legal team has pledged to keep up the fight anyway. Tuesday, December 8 marked the so-called “safe harbor” deadline in the electoral college process, when statewide election results that have been certified “are considered to be conclusive, and will apply in the counting of the electoral votes,” as a report from the Congressional Research Service explains. Electoral college members who are “certified by the safe harbor date are considered binding — making them extremely difficult to dispute in the courts,” ABC says, but in a Tuesday statement, Giuliani and Ellis pledged to “continue to champion election integrity until every legal vote is counted fairly and accurately.”
On Tuesday, Giuliani and Ellis said as follows:
‘The ‘Safe Harbor Deadline’ is a statutory timeline that generally denotes the last day for states to certify election results. However, it is not unprecedented for election contests to last well beyond December 8… The only fixed day in the U.S. Constitution is the inauguration of the President on January 20 at noon. Despite the media trying desperately to proclaim that the fight is over, we will continue to champion election integrity until every legal vote is counted fairly and accurately.’
Read Giuliani and Ellis’s full statement in the post below:
🚨🚨🚨 pic.twitter.com/eVv29qtoeU
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) December 8, 2020
In reality, “if a state has completed its post-election certification by Dec. 8, Congress is required to accept those results,” election law professor Rebecca Green explained to the Associated Press. With many states clearly done with their election results certification, Biden’s win is yet again getting confirmed as the process proceeds. Throwing out election results that have been certified by Tuesday could possibly require a change to federal law, meaning that the necessary scope of a prospective Trump team victory is large — and there’s no indication that such a victory for the president is on the horizon.
Meanwhile, election-related challenges continue to rage in the judiciary, including a court challenge that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, announced on Tuesday against the election results in some key swing states where Biden won. Paxton requested an extension of the Monday deadline for the electoral college vote, but there’s no particular indication that the U.S. Supreme Court, where he targeted his lawsuit, will grant his request.
