NORFOLK, Va. — In an unprecedented election year, the road to the presidency could run through the courts.
Legal teams for the campaigns of President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are gearing up for the days after Election Day.
“As soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers,” Trump said to supporters during a campaign stop in North Carolina on Sunday.
ABC News reports Biden’s campaign is also ready for a legal fight, if necessary.
“For something that’s going to be this close, this divisive, it makes sense that the legal teams are prepped and ready because this election hits on so many central factors,” said Dr. Benjamin Melusky, associate professors of political science at Old Dominion University.
Melusky predicts the extent of the post-election legal fight depends on if the race is tight or not by Tuesday night. For instance, Melusky says if Biden has a sizable lead by the time polls close, then courts may not find a justifiable reason to argue the case.
However, Melusky thinks differently if the presidential race comes down to the few states that only allow mail-in ballots to be counted on or after November 3. So far, he says hundreds of cases have already been filed across the country to dispute procedural changes allowed in response to the pandemic.
“For everything from how we cast our ballots, to the way our ballots look,” said Melusky while giving examples of possible legal disputes. “How we determine if they match up to the signature requirements.”
Melusky says the presidential race between President George Bush and Al Gore in 2000 set the stage for this year’s election.
Melusky does not expect Virginia to be a key legal battleground, but that could be a different story just down south in North Carolina. Lawyers already called on the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if the North Carolina State Board of Elections had the legal authority to extend the deadline to receive mail-in ballots.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a lower court’s decision to grant the extension by nine days. Meanwhile, a representative with the NC State Board of Elections says it will be ready for any dispute to ensure they are handled in an “expeditious way so that the election results are not held up.”
Melusky thinks recent explanations in similar rulings to the one in North Carolina could signal the highest court’s willingness to hear cases regarding the election process in the near future.