www.washingtonexaminer.com /news/trump-latest-republican-to-claim-voter-fraud-in-democratic-cities-with-courts-hesitant-to-intervene Trump latest Republican to claim voter fraud in Democratic cities, with courts hesitant to intervene by W. James Antle III, Politics Editor | | December 05, 2020 04:14 PM 6-7 minutes President Trump isn’t the first Republican to allege voter fraud in big Democratic-controlled cities or to face charges that he is seeking to disenfranchise minority voters in those communities. On election night in 1994, Ellen Sauerbrey looked poised to become the first Republican governor of Maryland since Spiro Agnew. But a late batch of votes, mainly from Baltimore, came through to put the Democrat over the top. Sauerbrey alleged fraud and challenged some 11,000 votes. Her opponent’s winning margin was less than 6,000. In 1982, Democrat Adlai Stevenson III came within 5,000 votes of toppling Illinois Republican Gov. Jim Thompson, who had led by double digits in pre-election polls. While it was Stevenson who sought a recount because he was behind by a slim margin statewide, subsequent investigations suggested at least 100,000 illegitimate votes were cast in Chicago, where the Democrat won 3 to 1. Detroit is the focal point of the Trump campaign’s election challenges in Michigan, where there have long been allegations of irregularities and generalized corruption. In 2013, Democratic Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted on 24 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering.p> Republicans have complained about urban Democratic political machines adversely affecting election integrity for decades. Democrats have increasingly argued that the real fraud is Republican attempts at voter suppression, especially in minority communities. In Georgia, where Trump is contesting the presidential election results, Democratic leader Stacey Abrams has accused GOP Gov. Brian Kemp of effectively stealing the 2018 gubernatorial election from her by the means. The courts are historically hesitant to overturn election results. In the Maryland case, a judge acknowledged there were some irregularities and said problems in Democratic-run Baltimore “must be immediately addressed if the citizens of this state are to have confidence in the electoral process.” But the judge refused to invalidate the results, saying there was “simply no evidence of any systematic omissions or a pattern of misconduct throughout the state.” In Illinois, despite the U.S. attorney at the time saying the number of illegitimate votes cast in Chicago could have exceeded 100,000, only 65 people were indicted and 63 convicted for election-related crimes. In this particular case, the Republican won the rest of the state by a big enough margin to overcome any big-city voter fraud. Allegations of voting skullduggery are a large part of Chicago’s city lore, including claims about the 1960 presidential election. “Urban blue centers have an incentive to cheat and/or skirt the rules set down by the various state legislatures because of machine politics and the need to deliver for the Democrat Party nationally, but also because the chances of being prosecuted are so rare since the courts at all levels have shown themselves so hesitant to weigh in on election matters,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. Courts have tended to set a very high bar for the judicial invalidation of elections. "This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread," wrote Brian Hagedorn, a conservative justice who sided with the liberals on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in rejecting a lawsuit by a pro-Trump group not affiliated with the campaign. "The loss of public trust in our constitutional order resulting from the exercise of this kind of judicial power would be incalculable." The U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and the Illinois Supreme Court in the contested 1982 gubernatorial election rejected the losing party’s request for additional recounts and let the existing vote lead stand. There is also the civil rights concern of throwing out votes in heavily black and Hispanic precincts. N. Charles Anderson, the executive director of the Urban League of Detroit & Southeastern Michigan, told the Washington Post that the Trump campaign’s efforts to challenge votes in Detroit constituted an “all-out assault” on the black vote. Further complicating Trump’s legal battle is the fact that he made gains in some of the big cities that are central to his claims compared to 2016 while losing ground in the suburbs. Henry Olsen of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center attributed Trump’s narrow losses in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to “suburban vote slippage.” Trump also made inroads with black and Hispanic voters nationally. The Trump team does have the option of persuading Republican state legislators in some of the contested battlegrounds that their elections were fundamentally flawed and that they should seat GOP electors instead ahead of the Electoral College vote. Democrat Joe Biden has declared victory and is recognized as the president-elect, with even Trump ultimately acceding to the beginning of a transition process even as he refuses to concede. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, said last week that the Justice Department has “not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election” to date. Yet, Republicans were rattled by a Georgia surveillance video purporting to show concealed boxes of ballots being added to the count. A top elections official in the state disputed the claim. “Trump has shed light on a broken and failed 50-state hodgepodge of voting standards and procedures,” said Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman. “This should be a wake-up call for the need for National Uniform Voting Practices Law.”