CLEVELAND — There are so many uncertainties about the 2020 presidential election, but there is one widely accepted certainty.
"Whatever side is down is going to try everything they possibly can,” said election law expert Ben Ginsberg. “Which would certainly include court action."
Ginsberg, a partner with the Cleveland based Jones Day law firm, played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount. He said during a meeting of the cross partisan National Task Force on Election Crises that while claims of fraud or voter suppression have become part of the get out the vote mechanism of both parties, 2020 is different.
"The country is more polarized than it’s ever been, and for the first time we have a president of the United States who is saying, without sufficient evidence, that the elections are fraudulent and rigged and the only way that he can lose is if they cheat,” he said.
Legal challenges could take place at many levels beginning with poll watchers on election day at the voting location to when absentee ballots should and shouldn't be counted all the way through the far fetched but still possible scenario of a state legislature in a disagreement over an outcome in their state looking to send a different slate of electors to Congress.
Task Force member Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino Foundation said she wants voters to understand there will be court challenges but that they are not an attack on the electoral process rather part of it and they want voters to know it for this reason.
"The moment that we start doubting our electoral process, that is the only reason that foreign actors interfere in foreign elections,” she said. “It is because they want the citizenry to doubt the legitimacy of their vote and of the political establishment."
