Donald Trump and his top campaign staff say they may declare victory on Election Night, hoping to cut short the tally of mail-in ballots confirming the triumph of Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Jason Miller, a senior campaign advisor, tipped off the tactic — threatened by Donald Trump throughout the past week — in an interview on ABC News on Sunday morning:

We believe we’ll be over 290 electoral votes on election night. So no matter what they try to do, no matter what kind of hijinks or nonsense they try to pull off, we’ll still have enough electoral votes to get President Trump reelected.

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Planning Your US Election Watch

Many analysts believe it is unlikely that either candidate will have an unassailable lead on Election Night, and the prospect is further remote for Trump, with an estimated 10% chance of winning a second term.

But Trump has prepared the ground for months with the falsehood that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. If early returns on Election Night have him ahead in the “tipping point” of Pennsylvania and other swing states such as Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, he could declare his victory and hope that no further votes will be tallied.

Legal challenges would then be launched in a series of state courts to enforce the cutoff, with the possibility of the case reaching the Supreme Court. Trump indicated on September 22 that he was rushing the confirmation of Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett to seat her by Election Day, hoping to put another justice in place to support his maneuver.

“Three sources familiar with [Trump’s] private comments” confirmed that Trump has told confidants he will declare victory on Tuesday night if he is “ahead”.

The sources said that, for Trump to issue his declaration, he will have to have won or established commanding leads in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona, and Georgia.

If that happens, the Trump campaign that if any subsequent count in Pennsylvania — the must-win state for Trump — confirms a Biden victory, the Democrats will have “stolen” the election.

Facing backlash over the revelations, Trump denied on Sunday night that he will declare victory prematurely.

But he then effectively reaffirmed his intentions:

I think it’s a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election. I think it’s a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over.

I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election….We’re going to go in the night of, as soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers.

He then pointed to the central tactic of halting the count in Pennsylvania: “We don’t want to have Pennsylvania, where you have a political governor, a very partisan guy….We don’t want to be in a position where he’s allowed, every day, to watch ballots come in.”

See also Essential Guide to Biden v. Trump: The 13 Swing States (and 2 Districts) That Will Decide the US Presidential Election

“Anti-Democratic, Unlawful, and Un-American”

Political and legal experts note that the outcome of US elections has never been based on a confirmation on Election Night. States never report final results that evening, and there is no legal requirement to do so until later in November. Electoral votes are not allocated until early December.

The Republican candidate for Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, reacted to Miller’s remarks, “Hey, guys, please ignore this type of garbage.”

And Nate Silver, the founder of the top electoral analysis site FiveThirtyEight, cut to the central point:

The Trump campaign’s communications director Tim Murtaugh tried to sweep away any issue, “This is nothing but people trying to create doubt about a Trump victory. When he wins, he’s going to say so.”

But Miller doubled down on the ploy of Democrats “stealing” the election through the counting of ballots after November 3: “[Trump] will be re-elected handily and no amount of post-election Democratic thievery will be able to change the results.”