President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the expansion of mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic is a scam and that he needs the Senate to confirm his Supreme Court pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the election. And he was open about why: Trump wants a new justice in place to ensure election-related cases are decided in his favor.

I think this will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think its very important to have nine justices, Trump said.

This is an extension of Trumps earlier suggestion that he is counting on the federal court system to decide the winner of the presidential election in his favor.

Now were counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins. Not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later, Trump said at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Saturday, one day after Ginsburgs death.

The substance of Trumps statements is clear. He wants to stop states from counting legitimate votes on Nov. 3, and he intends to file a challenge in the courts to do this. He is now saying that his nominee needs to be seated on the court in order to rule in his favor, stop the counting of legitimately cast ballots and hand him a second term.

Donald Trump isnt just trying to steal a Supreme Court seat hes trying to steal the election along with it, Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, a progressive judicial group, said in a statement. Even though Republicans may claim to already have the votes to confirm Trumps pick, Democrats cannot afford to compartmentalize this Supreme Court fight because the fate of the election itself may ride on it.

A postelection Trump court challenge could be a wilder sequel of Bush v. Gore. It could look like the Pennsylvania state Republican legislative caucus petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the Pennsylvania Supreme Courts Sept. 17 ruling extending the absentee ballot receipt deadline to three days after the election for ballots that were postmarked by Election Day. There are similar appeals working their way through the judicial system in states including Georgia and Michigan.

In every election held across the country, vote counting continues after election day in order to process all mail-in and provisional ballots, and as ballots and vote tallies are canvassed for any errors or miscounts.