Trump, Biden camps duel over possibility of a winner being declared on election night

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President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaigns sparred Monday over whether Americans will learn on election night who the next president will be, with Trump’s campaign accusing Democrats of wanting to “delegitimize” votes and Biden’s campaign saying there’s “no scenario” where the race will be called for Trump on Tuesday evening.

On Monday, the president’s deputy campaign manager Justin Clark said in a statement that Democrats “are panicking” because Biden “has not run up a large enough lead in early votes in battleground states” and claimed that they “know that President Trump’s in-person votes on Election Day will make up the difference and propel him to victory.”

The Trump campaign claimed Monday that Democrats want to “delegitimize” Election Day results by “coaching” Biden surrogates to refer to a potential Donald Trump success on Tuesday as a “Red Mirage.”

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“Biden’s political operatives have already been distributing talking points and research to delegitimize Election Day results by coaching surrogates to refer to the President’s Election Day success as a ‘Red Mirage,’” Clark said. “The operatives are advising surrogates and media to create a smoke screen by casting blame all around—imaging postal delays or falsely claiming that mail-in ballots that have simply not been returned should be considered legitimate votes that need to be counted.”

Clark added that “none of this will be true” but he said it would be “held up as proof that President Trump’s victory is a so-called ‘Red Mirage.’”

“No one should fall for it,” Clark said.

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Clark referenced the Biden campaign’s election protection program, which they had built earlier this year in preparation for a legal battle in the event of a contested election.

“We fully anticipate that Democrats will be in court arguing to extend deadlines for accepting and counting votes mailed and received well past deadlines enacted by individual state laws,” Clark said.

The Trump campaign added that they are “on guard for Democrat’s to attempt to subvert state declines for receiving and counting ballots and we will fight to make sure they adhere to the law.”

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“President Trump wants every eligible voter to be able to vote, vote once, and have it counted,” Clark said.

But the Biden campaign on Monday fired back, saying that “under no scenario” could Trump be declared a victor on Election Night, citing historic early voter turnout, and the way in which states count votes.

“It is no different than any other time and that is not something Trump should make you think is bad and wrong,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said Monday.

There is “no historical precedent” that any of our elections have been “completely counted” on Election night, he added. Votes from Biden supporters and Trump’s too, including military voters, could be counted after Election night.

“Trump will try to go out there and declare victory in an unfounded way,” Dillon warned, while noting that Biden will “address the American people.”

“We’re not really concerned what Donald Trump says on Election Night because what he says might have nothing to do with the reality of it,” Dillon said. “We’re not going to get distracted by it.”

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Meanwhile, the Biden campaign’s legal strategies are being directed to support election jurisdictions in preparing for and administering the vote under what they call “extraordinary conditions” this year, to raise voter awareness of options for in-person and for mail-in voting, to respond aggressively to voter suppression activities and to provide robust programs for identifying and countering foreign interference and misinformation from foreign or domestic sources, according to the campaign.

The effort includes a national team for special litigation, whose leaders include former Solicitors General Donald Verrilli and Walter Dellinger, and a team at the law firm Perkins Coie, which is led by Marc Elias, according to the campaign.

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Those lawyers are focusing state-by-state on protecting voter access to the polls and a “fair and accurate vote count.”

Meanwhile, President Trump’s reelection campaign is also bracing for the possibility of a protracted legal battle. It formed what it’s called “Lawyers for Trump,” a coalition to “protect the integrity” of the vote.

The Lawyers for Trump coalition comes as part of the joint Republican National Committee and Trump campaign's "Protect the Vote" effort, which has warned for months that "Democrats are trying to use coronavirus and the courts to legalize ballot harvesting, implement a nationwide mail-in ballot system, and eliminate nearly every safeguard in our elections.”

The campaign’s efforts come amid a fierce war of words between the Trump and Biden campaigns and their allies over the integrity of the vote – covering everything from GOP warnings about mail-in voting to Democrats' predictions that Trump would refuse to accept a loss.

Republicans, for their part, warn there is a potential for widespread fraud and confusion in November’s election due to the unprecedented scale of mail-in ballots in states across the nation.