Biden Is Projected To Be The President-Elect. Here’s How It All Went Down.

When is a lawsuit just a very expensive press release? Republicans have spent the past few days questioning the legality of the presidential election — even though, as I’ve mentioned several times on this live blog, the Trump campaign hasn’t yet produced actual evidence of wrongdoing, or proof that “illegal” ballots are being included in the count.

The latest notable legal maneuver came this afternoon, when Pennsylvania Republicans asked the Supreme Court to order Pennsylvania counties to segregate ballots that arrive after Election Day and refrain from counting them until the legal questions surrounding the deadline have been resolved.

Upon reading that, those of you who have followed the election litigation closely might have a bit of déjà vu. Pennsylvania’s secretary of state has already directed county election officials to set aside the late-arriving ballots (which are still valid under a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling) to be counted later. (This batch of ballots does not appear to be very large.) In their emergency application to the Supreme Court, Pennsylvania Republicans expressed concern that some counties might not be following the secretary of state’s orders because they hadn’t confirmed that they were adhering to the procedure, but didn’t offer any evidence that the guidance was actually being flouted.

This is just the latest in a stream of legal actions from the Trump campaign and Republicans that allege election misconduct without providing concrete proof that something illegal has happened. In a statement earlier today, Trump declared that “illegal ballots should not be counted.” But there’s no evidence that’s actually happening. The legal arguments that have been made in that direction either haven’t been convincing to judges, or — like this one — seem highly unlikely to affect the election in ways that could change the outcome. And so far, the litigation hasn’t stopped or even meaningfully slowed the vote count in key states — much less called the totals into question.