words scaled by the frequency that president trump has used them in tweets during his term in office, according to the trump twitter archive. washington — president donald trump spent much of the 2020 presidential campaign insisting that he could only lose if the election was rigged against him, and he has spent nearly every day since his defeat claiming his dire predictions of fraud had come to pass. but just as he cried foul before a single vote was cast – something he also did in 2016 – trump has maintained he was robbed of victory without any credible evidence to support that belief. despite assurances from his own departments of justice and homeland security that no serious fraud occurred, trump has raged against the election result and mounted a relentless campaign to reverse president-elect joe biden's 306-232 electoral college win. more: congress' count of electoral college votes could be most contentious in 144 years. here are past dramatic moments the president, his lawyers and his allies have filed scores of lawsuits; made repeated allegations of election fraud in news and social media; organized protests; tried to convince state legislatures to take action; and held hearings in various state houses, hotel ballrooms and, at one point, a landscaping company. and on wednesday, 13 senators and more than 100 republican lawmakers plan to object to the certification of biden's win when congress meets in a joint session. all those efforts to overturn the election can be a bit dizzying, so usa today has broken it down by the numbers to help make sense of it all. election lawsuits: 62 the president and his allies filed 62 lawsuits in state and federal courts seeking to overturn election results in states the president lost, according to marc elias, a democratic election lawyer who is tracking the outcomes. election lawsuit defeats: 61 out of the 62 lawsuits filed challenging the presidential election, 61 have failed, according to elias. some cases were dismissed for lack of standing and others based on the merits of the voter fraud allegations. the decisions have came from both democratic-appointed and republican-appointed judges – including federal judges appointed by trump. more: 'it really is over now': the 24 hours that likely thwarted trump's effort to overturn the election state supreme courts in arizona, nevada and arizona each rejected or declined to hear trump’s appeals to overturn results in those states, while the pennsylvania and michigan supreme courts denied multiple lawsuits. the 60th and 61st losses came in recent days. last friday, a trump-appointed federal judge in texas dismissed a lawsuit from rep. louie gohmert, r-texas, that argued vice president mike pence has the conditional power to decide which states' electoral college votes to count. more: a look at what several state supreme courts said about rejecting attempts to overturn biden's election win on monday, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by voters in wisconsin, pennsylvania, georgia, michigan and arizona that argued state legislatures should have met after the election to certify votes. the lone victory for the trump team was a small one. a pennsylvania judge sided with the trump campaign, ruling that voters could not go back and “cure” their ballots if they failed to provide proper identification three days after the election. the ruling affected few votes and did not change the outcome in pennsylvania, which biden won by 81,660 votes. number of contested states: 6 the vast majority of the lawsuits were in six pivotal battleground states that biden won: arizona, georgia, michigan, nevada, pennsylvania and wisconsin. trump won five of the states four years ago in his victory over hillary clinton, but biden flipped each to the democratic column. house republicans who plan to object to electoral college results wednesday said they plan to target these same six states. number of times the us supreme court sided against trump: 2 the u.s. supreme court twice refused to take up trump-endorsed lawsuits that sought to overturn the results of the nov. 3 election. in a one-sentence denial, the supreme court on dec. 8 rejected a request from pennsylvania republicans that sought to overturn biden's win in the state. the challenge, led rep. mike kelly, r-pa., claimed that the republican-led state legislature's expansion of absentee voting violated the state's constitution. three days later, the supreme court refused to let texas challenge the election results in four battleground states critical to trump's defeat. the court said texas did not demonstrate "a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections." number of recounts: 3 georgia held two recounts of its presidential election results, both reaffirming biden's win in the state. wisconsin had one recount that confirmed biden's victory there. the first recount in georgia – a hand recount ordered by the state – found biden won by 12,284 votes, a narrower margin than the 14,196-vote lead he held immediately following the election. local election administrators identified uncounted ballots in four counties. each was the result of human error. the second recount in georgia – one requested by the trump campaign – narrowed biden's victory to 11,779 votes votes trump gained from recounts: 2,343 in wisconsin, biden gained 74 votes following a partial recount of the state's results that focused only on two democratic strongholds, milwaukee and dane counties. it increased biden's statewide margin to 20,682 votes out of about 3 million cast. adding the differences in both states together, trump gained 2,343 votes as a result of the georgia and wisconsin recounts. number of elections trump has claimed were rigged: at least 6 this is not the first time trump has declared an election had been "rigged" or "stolen." on election day in 2012, when president barack obama defeated his republican challenger mitt romney, trump tweeted that there were "reports of voting machines switching romney votes to obama." "pay close attention to the machines, don't let your vote be stolen," he said. four years later, when sen. ted cruz, r-texas, defeated trump in the iowa caucuses, trump tweeted, "ted cruz didn't win iowa, he stole it. that is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. bad!" ted cruz didn't win iowa, he stole it. that is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. bad! — donald j. trump (@realdonaldtrump) february 3, 2016 trump also said the 2016 democratic primary was "rigged" against sen. bernie sanders, i-vt., and, as in 2020, he declared the 2016 general election race was "rigged" against him before it even took place. even after winning the election and being sworn in as president, trump baselessly insisted more than 3 million illegal votes were cast against him. a white house commission trump created to investigate election fraud disbanded without finding any evidence to support the president's claims. trump went on to allege "fraud" in the 2018 midterm elections and to imply there was something nefarious about the late changing vote totals in tight races, though such changes are routine in close elections where projections cannot be made immediately. just out — in arizona, signatures don’t match. electoral corruption - call for a new election? we must protect our democracy! — donald j. trump (@realdonaldtrump) november 9, 2018 the president also declared in 2020, without evidence, that the democratic primary had once again been "rigged" against sanders. number of electoral votes changed as the result of trump's effort: 0 despite all the lawsuits, recounts and false voter fraud allegations, the electoral college on dec. 14 elected biden the next president by a margin of 306 to 232 – marking no change in the electoral outcome. biden finished with a record 81,281,502 votes nationally, defeating trump in the popular vote by a sizable 7 million votes. with 51.3% of the national popular vote, biden won with the highest share of the vote for a challenger of an incumbent president since franklin d. roosevelt in 1932. trump won 46.8% of the vote nationally. days until biden's inauguration wednesday's joint session of congress will have procedural fireworks as 13 u.s. senators and more than 100 republican house members plan to object to electoral votes from potentially six battleground states that biden won. but the efforts are doomed to fail, lacking the votes in the democratic-controlled house and even in the republican-led senate. because each objection could lead to hours of debate in the house and senate, the session could be a marathon. but in the end, biden and harris will be inaugurated as the next president and vice president at noon on jan. 20.
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