Trump Sues to Overturn State's Election Result

President Trump is attempting to overturn the election results in Wisconsin, which were certified by the chairwoman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers Monday. In what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel calls a "last-ditch effort" to reclaim the state, the president has gone directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is controlled 4-3 by conservatives. His lawsuit seeks to disqualify some 221,000 ballots from the state's two most populous—and Democratic—counties, where his campaign paid $3 million for recounts that ended up adding 87 votes to President-elect Joe Biden's lead. Biden won the state, which narrowly voted for Trump in 2016, by almost 21,000 votes.

The ballots Trump wants to discard include 170,140 absentee ballots where there was not a written application on file, although this would include those where the request was made online, the AP reports. The Journal Sentinel notes that the Trump lawsuit challenges elements of a voting system put in place when Republicans controlled the state government—and does not seek to discard any ballots from counties that voted Republican. Josh Kaul, the state's Democratic attorney general, slammed the lawsuit as seeking to create a "two-tiered system for votes cast in the presidential election, with citizens from two of our counties subject to disenfranchisement under much stricter rules than citizens in the rest of the state."