Washington

Minutes after US media declared Democrat Joe Biden victor in the tight race for the US presidency on Saturday, President Donald Trump rejected that conclusion, saying he will prove in court that he was the winner.

“The simple fact is this election is far from over,” Trump said in a statement. “Legal votes decide who is president, not the news media.”

But experts say Trump has little chance of reversing Biden’s win, without having provided the evidence of widespread vote fraud needed to overturn results in several states.

“Trump’s litigation strategy is going nowhere. It is not going to make a difference to the election outcome,” said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.

Take to the courts

Trump said his campaign will take to the courts on Monday to “ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated.”

He pointed to expected recounts in states where Biden is only a few thousand votes ahead.

And he referred to Pennsylvania, where Republicans allege fraud and say thousands of late-arriving mail-in ballots were illegally counted.

“Networks don’t get to decide elections. Courts do. Courts set aside elections when they are illegal,” Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani declared Saturday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city.

Trump is right: the election is not truly over until each state formally certifies its vote, which will take place over the coming weeks.

Electoral College

But with nearly all the 150 million-plus ballots counted, he simply does not have enough votes in the Electoral College that formally chooses the president, US media collectively concluded Saturday.

There is a precedent for a turn to the courts.

In 2000, with the election battle between George W. Bush and Al Gore hinging on the outcome in Florida — where Bush led with just over 500 votes — the two sides fought to the Supreme Court over a state-wide recount. The high court narrowly rejected a recount, handing the election to Bush.

In Trump’s case, he not only has to overcome a deficit of nearly 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania, but he is also down by many thousands of votes each in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. It’s highly unlikely the Supreme Court would move to overturn election results of those margins in multiple states.