Despite incomplete results from several battleground states that could determine the outcome of the US presidential race, President Donald Trump proclaimed victory over Democratic challenger Joe Biden today.

Despite incomplete results from several battleground states that could determine the outcome of the US presidential race, President Donald Trump proclaimed victory over Democratic challenger Joe Biden today.
The premature move confirmed worries Democrats had voiced for weeks that Mr Trump would seek to dispute the election results.
That could set off any number of legal and political dramas in which the presidency could be determined by some combination of the courts, state politicians and Congress.
Here are the various ways the election can be contested:
LawsuitsEarly voting data shows Democrats are voting by mail in far greater numbers than Republicans. In states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that do not count mail-in ballots until Election Day, initial results appeared to favour Mr Trump because they were slower to count mailed ballots.
Democrats had expressed concern that Mr Trump would, as he did today, declare victory before those ballots could be fully tallied.
A close election could result in litigation over voting and ballot-counting procedures in battleground states.
Cases filed in individual states could eventually reach the US Supreme Court, as Florida’s election did in 2000, when Republican George W Bush prevailed over Democrat Al Gore by just 537 votes in Florida after the high court halted a recount.
Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett as Supreme Court justice just days before the election, creating a 6-3 conservative majority that could favor the president if the courts weigh in on a contested election.
“We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop,” Mr Trump said today, even though election laws in US states require all votes to be counted, and many states routinely take days to finish counting legal ballots.
Electoral CollegeThe US president is not elected by a majority of the popular vote. Under the Constitution, the candidate who wins the majority of 538 electors, known as the Electoral College, becomes the next president.
In 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton but secured 304 electoral votes to her 227. The candidate who wins each state’s popular vote typically earns that state’s electors. This year, the electors meet on 14 December to cast votes. Both chambers of Congress will meet on 6 January to count the votes and name the winner.
Normally, governors certify the results in their respective states and share the information with Congress.
But some academics have outlined a scenario in which the governor and the legislature in a closely contested state submit two different election results. Battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina all have Democratic governors and Republican-controlled legislatures.
According to legal experts, it is unclear in this scenario whether Congress should accept the governor’s electoral slate or not count the state’s electoral votes at all.
While most experts view the scenario as unlikely, there is historical precedent. The Republican-controlled Florida legislature considered submitting its own electors in 2000 before the Supreme Court ended the contest between Bush and Gore. In 1876, three states appointed “dueling electors,”prompting Congress to pass the Electoral Count Act (ECA) in1887.
Under the act, each chamber of Congress would separately decide which slate of “dueling electors” to accept.
As of now, Republicans hold the Senate while Democrats control the House of Representatives, but the electoral count is conducted by the new Congress, which will be sworn in on 3 January.
If the two chambers disagree, it’s not entirely clear what would happen.
The act says that the electors approved by each state’s “executive” should prevail. Many scholars interpret that as a state’s governor, but others reject that argument. The law has never been tested or interpreted by the courts.
Ned Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, called the ECA’s wording “virtually impenetrable” in a 2019 paper exploring the possibility of an Electoral College dispute.
Another unlikely possibility is that Mr Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence, in his role as Senate president, could try to throw out a state’s disputed electoral votes entirely if the two chambers cannot agree, according to Mr Foley’s analysis.
In that case, the Electoral College Act does not make clear whether a candidate would still need 270 votes, a majority of the total, or could prevail with a majority of the remaining electoral votes – for example, 260 of the 518 votes that would be left if Pennsylvania’s electors were invalidated.
“It is fair to say that none of these laws has been stress-tested before,” Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer who represented the Bush campaign during the 2000 dispute, told reporters in a conference call on 20 October.
The parties could ask the Supreme Court to resolve any congressional stalemate, but it’s not certain the court would be willing to adjudicate how Congress should count electoral votes.
‘Contingent Election’A determination that neither candidate has secured a majority of electoral votes would trigger a “contingent election” under the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. That means the House of Representatives chooses the next president,while the Senate selects the vice president.
Each state delegation in the House gets a single vote. As of now, Republicans control 26 of the 50 state delegations, while Democrats have 22; one is split evenly and another has seven Democrats, six Republicans and a Libertarian.
A contingent election also takes place in the event of a 269-269 tie after the election; there are several plausible paths to a deadlock in 2020.
Any election dispute in Congress would play out ahead of a strict deadline – 20 January, when the Constitution mandates that the term of the current president ends.
Under the Presidential Succession Act, if Congress still has not declared a presidential or vice presidential winner by then,the Speaker of the House would serve as acting president. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, is the current speaker.
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‘We want all voting to stop’ – Trump
While Democrat Joe Biden has voiced confidence in his chances, President Donald Trump has gone a step further, already claiming victory and saying he will go to the Supreme Court to get his way.
The Republican said in a White House speech that “we want all voting to stop,” apparently meaning that he wants to stop the counting of mail-in ballots which can be legally accepted by state election boards after yesterday’s election.
Democrats are widely thought to have cast more mail-in ballots than Trump’s supporters and Republicans have already signaled they will pursue an aggressive strategy in Pennsylvania to have the votes that arrived after the election thrown out.
Tom Wolf, the state’s Democratic governor shot back today, tweeting that there were a million votes left to count.
“I promised Pennsylvanians that we would count every vote and that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.
The state’s top court ordered a three day extension which the US Supreme Court refused to block, but said it could revisit the issue after the election – and the ascension of new conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett could prove decisive in that decision.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Democratic strategist and consultant in communications and politics Patrick Mellody said going to the Supreme court is “not even the way it works” and you have to go to the state courts first.
Mr Mellody, who is from Pennsylvania, said the count there would take a little longer and that is what should be done in a democracy.
Democratic party strategist Jimmy Ryan said the US is still a democracy and that requires that votes be counted.
“The only one who has played shenanigans with the election, is Donald Trump who is the ‘crook in chief'”, he said. 
Mr Ryan said that he did not believe this election would be resolved in the Supreme Court but votes will be counted and Joe Biden will be US elected president.
Supreme Court precedence
Florida with its coveted 29 Electoral College votes has long proved a headache for pollsters to call, and in 2000 it famously punched a hole in the Democrats’ dreams of victory.
Al Gore and George W Bush’s fight for the White House will always be remembered for the pivotal role played by “hanging chads” caused by the controversial punch card voting system in Florida.
With the results from the US’s other 49 states leaving the two candidates neck and neck, it was the Sunshine State that had the deciding vote.
Commentators initially called the state in Mr Gore’s favour, but later returned its status to “too close to call” before declaring victory for Mr Bush.
What followed was multiple recounts and a legal fight that ended up in the Supreme Court, which ultimately saw Mr Bush take the presidency.
He officially won by just 537 ballots in the state on a turnout of 6.1 million.
The ambiguity of the result was blamed on the hanging chads – a voting card that had not been neatly punched through, resulting in it not being counted by the tabulating machines.
Observers examine ballots during the counting of the under ballots in December 2000 in Florida
Polling cards that had a clear indentation but no hole were dubbed “pregnant chads”, while “swinging chads” were still attached at two corners, also leading to the votes being discarded.
Mr Gore sought a recount of a small sample of Florida’s disputed ballots and it is estimated 2.9% of votes cast never made it into the certified totals.
The Democrat’s lawyers launched a bid for a recount of all 1.8 million ballots cast in four predominantly Democratic counties, before calling for further recounts elsewhere.
The Florida Supreme Court ordered a state-wide recount of “undervotes” – a ballot that does not clearly indicate the voter’s preference – on 8 December.
It was seemingly a huge victory for Mr Gore, but it was stopped the next day by the US Supreme Court and the legal action returned to state courts.
On 13 December, the closest presidential contest in decades finally ended 36 days after election day following a 5-4 vote by the US Supreme Court that allowed Mr Bush’s victory to stand.
Mr Gore accepted the verdict and with that Mr Bush was on his way to the White House.