Trump assembles team of hotshot lawyers to monitor election and prepare explosive court battle if Harris claims victory
DONALD Trump’s team is already preparing legal challenges to the US election result in the instance that rival Kamala Harris wins by a small margin.
Both Republican and Democrat campaign teams have spent months getting ready for the prospect of weeks of courtroom battles in the aftermath of a highly divisive polling day.
In what’s set to be the tightest race to the Whitehouse in 25 years, team Trump are already claiming there’s no way to verify votes from abroad or military ballots.
His top aides are also arguing election officials have used early voting to commit fraud, while masses of postal votes in swing states are illegal.
Veteran election lawyer Gineen Bresso is leading the charge for Trump, with hundreds of solicitors helping her put together the Republican argument.
The Democrats have a 400 strong legal team in place, with staff including two former US solicitor generals.
An additional 10,000 lawyers are on standby to advise Kamala Harris across 50 states.
Dana Remus, who is leading the legal charge for the Democrats, told the Wall Street Journal: “They have started earlier and we have started earlier too.
“We never stopped preparing since 2020.
“As soon as the Republicans file a case, as soon as they start saying election results can’t be trusted, we are prepared to respond.”
David Becker, executive director of the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, added: “The question isn’t whether they’re going to bring these claims, the question is whether the court is going to even give them the slightest time of day.”
Experts have predicted tomorrow’s election will be the tightest since 2000, when Republican George Bush claimed victory in a Florida recount by 537 votes against Al Gore.
This time around all eyes will be on Pennsylvania, where a crucial 19 electoral votes are up for grabs and the race could go either way.
The state does not permit early voting and doesn’t process postal votes before polling day, meaning the result could take longer than other states.
Michael Morse, election law expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said: “We should expect a spate of local litigation throughout the state in the immediate aftermath of the election, not because those suits are meritorious, but because Pennsylvania law is rife with such opportunities.”
Trump last night declared the election “ours to lose” as America heads to the polls in the tightest race in more than two decades.
Kamala Harris had a wafer-thin poll lead on the eve of voting as she hammered the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania yesterday.
But in reality, the numbers were well within the margin of error, with Mr Trump insisting he is on the eve of an historic comeback.
Speaking to thousands of reporters in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of the seven battleground states, he said: “If we get everybody out and vote, there’s not a thing they can do.”
He also vowed a 25 per cent tariff on all goods from Mexico on his first day in office should he win tonight.
Both teams last night claimed they were “feeling good” about their numbers after an unprecedented 78 million voters had already gone to the polls early.
His senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters: “The numbers show that President Trump is going to win this race.
“We feel very good about where things are.”
But Ms Harris’s Democrat campaign believes the sheer size of its voter mobilisation efforts will swing it for them.
Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon hit back: “We are feeling very good about where we are right now.”
The two contenders pulled out all the stops — including A-List celebrities — as they spent the past 24 hours zig-zagging across the northern swing states.
How do the US presidential elections work?
BY Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
The Democratic and Republican parties nominate their candidates with a series of votes – called state primaries and caucuses – in the run up to the election in November, held every four years.
This gives members the opportunity to choose who they want to lead the party into an election – this year, Donald Trump and following Biden’s resignation, Kamala Harris.
There are also some independent candidates running for president – arguably the most well-known was Robert F Kennedy Jr who pulled out in August and endorsed Trump.
In US elections the winner is not the candidate who gets the most votes across the country.
Instead Trump and Harris will compete to win smaller contests held in each of the 50 states.
Many of the states often vote the same way – but seven of them – Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona – tend to go in either direction.
Each state has a number of electoral college votes – partly based on population sizes – with a total of 538 across the country up for grabs.
The winner is the candidate that gets 270 or more, marking a majority in the electoral college.
All but two of the US’ 50 states – Maine and Nebraska – have a winner-takes-all rule.
Meaning whichever candidate gets the highest number of votes wins all of the state’s electoral college votes.
In 2016 Hillary Clinton won more votes nationally than Donald Trump – but she still lost the election because of electoral college votes.
The candidate who will win this election is the one who secures 270 or more college ballots.
Usually the winner is declared on the night, but it can take days to finalise the result.
In 2020 Joe Biden wasn’t officially announced as the president-elect until November 7.
The new president will be sworn into office in January on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington DC.