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Can Trump steal the election?

Republicans’ election-related lawsuits don’t amount to much. But the future of election law under the new US Supreme Court is a different story.

Laura Bult
Laura Bult Laura Bult is a video journalist covering climate, the environment, agriculture and urbanism, among other things. She’d love to hear from you: laura.bult@voxmedia.com.

In the days following Election Day, President Donald Trump threatened legal action in some of the battleground states that were among the last to count their ballots. It was all part of a campaign to cast doubt on the legality of mail-in ballots, which disproportionately favored President-elect Joe Biden.

The Trump campaign, or Republican lawyers, have filed lawsuits in the battleground states of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Texas. Some call into question so few ballots that they pale in comparison to Biden’s lead in those states, while others are related to unsubstantiated claims of a lack of access for partisan poll watchers during the ballot-counting process. The lawsuits themselves are unlikely to alter the course of the election or reach the Supreme Court, like Bush v. Gore, the case that halted a recount in the 2000 presidential race and resulted in the election of George W. Bush.

But one lawsuit in Pennsylvania sheds light on a potentially anti-democratic stance regarding the interpretation of future election laws, one that gives outsize power to both the Supreme Court and state legislatures. Watch the video above to learn more about the Trump campaign’s lawsuits and the future of the Supreme Court and election law.

You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. And if you’re interested in supporting our video journalism, you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube.

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