It’s unclear if the point on the 2020 election timeline has been reached that allows for serious discussion of legal challenges around what the Trump camp is suggesting looks like widespread fraud. Too early and the newly gracious and delicate media will revert back to hurling invective, painting those giving such insane notions quarter as mad and pathologically incapable of just letting a legitimate loss go. But the Trump administration’s legal challenge — and his legal team has shown amazing resolve in revealing only little bits here and there — is starting to take shape, and it could put as many as 94 electoral college votes in play by some estimates. So here’s to risking the smear.

There are many angles the Trump administration could take based on anecdotal reports out of many states. In Michigan and Georgia there were problems with glitches in the vote counting software (Dominion, used in 28 states, which has its own interesting history I won’t get into here except to say in 2010 it bought the software named in a federal investigation into the 2004 recall election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela). It should be noted, the Michigan county in question is disputing Dominion — used in almost all other Michigan counties — was the source of the glitch. Georgia, however, has four counties that experienced some kind of tech glitch, Spalding and Morgan counties, Gwinnett (which led to a delay counting absentee ballots), and Fulton (which led to people being asked to fill out provisional ballots). Fulton has also indicated a problem with their vote count reporting leading to a rescanning of some ballots.

Then there’s Nevada, where a whistleblower has come forward indicating he witnessed illegal ballots being counted.

🚨A whistleblower has come forward in Clark County saying they witnessed mail ballots being counted without signatures being verified⬇️ 🚨 pic.twitter.com/ixM8h09aZw

— Nevada GOP (@NVGOP) November 8, 2020

In Wisconsin, poll workers may have altered thousands of absentee ballots in violation of the law. And — get this — they made their illegal corrections in easily traceable red pen.

“In defiance of and direct contradiction to the statute, the Wisconsin Elections Commission gave guidance–that is, cover–to all 72 county clerks and turned the statute on his head,” Gableman said. “They said, ‘Gee, we know the law says an absentee ballot without the witness address is not valid, but county clerk, you have a duty to go ahead and look up on your own the witness’ address if there’s no address on the absentee ballot.”

Anticipating a legal challenge to this seemingly highly unlawful advice, the WEC instructed clerks to write in these witness addresses in red pen so that they would be easy to find during a recount or audit of the vote.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin estimates that thousands of witness addresses may have been changed, thus invalidating the ballots on which they appeared. The statutory remedy for this is to subtract a commensurate number of votes for the candidates for whom those ballots were cast, meaning that vote totals may substantially change.

Adding to all that, it was announced Friday the Trump administration was bringing a lawsuit over ballot handling in Arizona, and SCOTUS has already involved itself in the Pennsylvania legal challenge. Additionally, new lawsuits are set to be filed Monday in both Pennsylvania and Nevada.

What this all means is there are a LOT of lawsuits over the 2020 election. One twitter user created a handy map; and while I can’t verify outstanding legal challenges mean those states can’t certify electoral votes, is seems at least plausible they couldn’t until those lawsuits are resolved. I welcome any thoughts on that in the comments…

Nevadahttps://t.co/Rwuh7mZmo1

Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgiahttps://t.co/MHqBoHLcYr

Recount Request in Wisconsonhttps://t.co/mWjSN0QTym

North Carolina will not announce till Nov. 13, 2020https://t.co/usRrY7VzCu

— David John Weaver (@DavidJohnWeave) November 7, 2020

So tuck in, folks. The next few weeks are going to be a public relations battle that — almost unbelievably with all we’ve been through as nation over the last four years of Russian collusion hoaxes and white supremacist slander — we’ve not seen before. Biden (and most of the media) will be demanding Trump concede. If Trump holds out (which it looks like he means to do until he’s satisfied he lost fairly), we can expect to see the midnight rioting again, unfortunately.

Trump’s side, however, is playing their poker hand quite close to the vest, a strategy likely to help them during the coming PR war. Ron Coleman, an attorney tapped to work on Trump’s legal challenge in Pennsylvania, does, however, divulge what he can on Twitter (and he’s worth a follow for sure). He likes to tease with compelling little nuggets like this frequently:

Noam. I was there. This is beyond smoking guns. And they're going into legal documents.

— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) November 8, 2020

Anyone that believed the 2020 election was over when Biden, with the help of the mainstream press, pulled a Napoleon and crowned himself is surely questioning that belief as the days wear on. And they are questioning it, whether they’re willing to admit it to themselves or anyone else.