Is the 2020 election over yet?

Not according to the campaign of President Donald Trump, which continues to fight legal battles over alleged electoral fraud and the procedures for counting votes in at least seven states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Utah and Wisconsin.

Democrat Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, were declared by the media to be the winners of the election for president and vice president Nov. 7 based on the electoral vote.

However, successful legal challenges in any of these states could delay an official declaration of victory for several more weeks — although it’s unlikely even successful challenges will change the outcome, said Villanova University professor of law and religion Michael Moreland, director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy.

“There are still steps to be taken to certify the election results, but I certainly think that in terms of the outcome, it’s already settled,” said Moreland in a Nov. 13 interview with Catholic News Service.

“The problem is the margins are sufficiently large. It’s one thing if the margin is within a few hundred votes — that means that various kinds of challenges or questions about certain ballots might make a difference,” he explained, “but when you’re talking about margins of several thousand, it’s unheard of for that kind of margin to be overturned in a legal challenge.”

Georgia and some other states have automatic recount provisions, which they’re currently carrying out. In states without automatic recount provisions, a recount can’t just be demanded — the decision whether to recount is up to state election officials. “So from that standpoint, the legal options have evaporated for the Trump campaign,” Moreland said.

Several of the legal challenges have been decided in recent days. And with the large margins of ballots in most of the states in question, Moreland said, even a successful challenge is unlikely to change the electoral map enough for Trump to reach the required 270 electoral votes.

To date, Biden has 290 electoral votes and Trump has 232. Once Georgia certifies its election results Nov. 20, if the state goes for Biden, he will get its 16 more electoral votes.

In Pennsylvania, for example, there has been an ongoing challenge to the fact that the state Supreme Court ordered that counties receive ballots up until three days after election day as long as they were postmarked by election day.

“The problem for the Trump campaign now is that whether those ballots are counted or not, it won’t make a difference to the outcome of the election. The lack of evidence of any widespread fraud or unequal application of voting rules, combined with the size of Biden’s advantage in most of these states, those are the reasons why the Trump legal options are on their way to being exhausted,” Moreland said.

Certainly, in close campaigns, recount efforts to verify the numbers for each candidate is not unusual — although since Bush v. Gore in 2000, it hasn’t happened on this kind of a presidential scale.

“It’s important that there be competence in the integrity of the electoral system,” Moreland emphasized. What the effects of this election on people’s perception of integrity will be are still undetermined, but he believes that because the Trump campaign has not produced in court evidence of fraud on the scale that was initially alleged, the result will remain unchanged.

“In a roundabout kind of way,” he said, “that shows people that some of these concerns about fraud, while not completely unfounded,” are not of the scale being alleged — a scale that would be needed for the result to be overturned.

Perhaps the good news of what has become an election season is that the challenges are legitimizing the American electoral system, added Moreland.

“They show that after a second, third, fourth look by courts, by judges, by election boards, by state officials at the numbers and the integrity of the system, that the results are accurate,” he said.

“It’s not just what people saw coming in on election night. … Now, a couple of weeks out, you see courts and elected officials, secretaries of state across the country looking at these issues and coming back and saying that these results are accurate.”

The certification of state election results has implications for the certification of electors for the Electoral College. The deadlines for certification started the week of Nov. 16.

Each state certifies its election results, and a slate of electors is appointed. Those electors meet at the state capitols the Monday after the second Wednesday in December. Those results are tabulated in a joint session of Congress the first week of January, marking the official end to the election season.

Although there can be challenges to the returns of any particular state — which can be raised if one member of the House of Representatives and a senator come together to raise an objection — the two chambers of Congress vote to accept or reject the challenges.

Historically such objections have been few and summarily dismissed, including in the wake of Bush v. Gore.

Moreland believes such will again be the case if objections are raised in January, even though — interestingly — this year’s joint session vote will be presided over by Vice President Mike Pence in his capacity as president of the Senate, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, presuming she is re-elected speaker of the House in January.

This difficult moment is brought to the American people by divisive campaigns and an election that is taking place during a pandemic, he noted.

But Pope Francis and other world leaders have congratulated Biden, the second Catholic presidential candidate to be elected in the nation’s history — which, in the court of public opinion, has already legitimized the preliminary result of the 2020 election.

Although there is no legal requirement for concession, Moreland noted, it’s for the good of the country that the losing candidate acknowledge the election results and concede to the winner.

“Like anything in our civic life today, it’s very divisive,” said Moreland of this year’s election season. “People are disappointed about that. I think, though, that there are people for whom it’s hard to lose an election. People on the Trump side are upset, and some of their concerns about fraud are being stoked … not unlike after the 2016 election and allegations of Russian interference.”

Those are challenges to an election, he admitted, but added that the results will be confirmed by the integrity of the process of the election itself.