Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller previewed Team Trump’s strategy for Election Night, suggesting on Sunday morning that counting all legally cast ballots was akin to stealing the election. During an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Miller predicted that Trump would be ahead in the vote counts of several swing states on Tuesday evening and that would give him the necessary number of electoral votes to win the election.
“If you speak with many smart Democrats, they believe that President Trump will be ahead on election night probably getting 280 electors, somewhere in that range. and they’re just going to try to steal it back after the election,” Miller exclaimed. “We believe we'll be over 290 electoral votes on election night. So no matter what they try to do, what kind of hijinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense they try to pull off, we're still going to have enough electoral votes to get President Trump re-elected.”
Stephanopoulos, meanwhile, didn’t provide any pushback to Miller’s baseless assertion that counting ballots after Election Day is “nonsense” and thievery. Furthermore, some states—such as Pennsylvania—are unable to immediately count mail-in ballots due to state laws. (Mail-in vote totals are expected to be heavily Democratic.) Even some Republicans criticized Miller’s comments that the election should be decided only by votes counted on Tuesday.
“Hey guys, please ignore this type of garbage. The truth is that elections are never decided on election night. In Utah (and most states) it takes 2 weeks to finalize counting and certify results. It really doesn’t matter who is ahead on election night, it only matters when every eligible vote is counted and each county canvasses and certifies the vote totals,” Utah GOP gubernatorial nominee Spencer Cox tweeted. “Yes it’s true that when a race isn’t close the media may ‘call’ the race, and candidates may concede or declare custody, but such actions are technically meaningless.”
