WASHINGTON — Fac­ing the poten­tial for nar­row loss­es in mul­ti­ple bat­tle­grounds, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump might have to per­suade the Supreme Court to set aside votes in two or more states to pre­vent Joe Biden from becom­ing president.

That’s a sub­stan­tial­ly dif­fer­ent sce­nario than in the con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 2000, which was effec­tive­ly set­tled by the Supreme Court. Then, the entire fight was over Florida’s elec­toral votes and involved a recount as opposed to try­ing to halt the ini­tial count­ing of ballots.

Trump’s cam­paign and Repub­li­cans already are mount­ing legal chal­lenges in sev­er­al states, although most are small-scale law­suits that do not appear to affect many votes.

Judges in Geor­gia and Michi­gan quick­ly dis­missed cam­paign law­suits Thurs­day, under­cut­ting a cam­paign legal strat­e­gy to attack the integri­ty of the vot­ing process in states where the result could mean Trump’s defeat.

The rul­ings came as Biden inched clos­er to the 270 Elec­toral Col­lege votes need­ed to win the White House.

Trump and his cam­paign promised even more legal action, mak­ing unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tions of elec­tion fraud.

Speak­ing in the White House brief­ing room Thurs­day, the pres­i­dent launched into a litany of claims, with­out proof, about how Democ­rats were try­ing to unfair­ly deprive him of a sec­ond term. “But we think there’ll be a lot of lit­i­ga­tion because we can’t have an elec­tion stolen like this,” Trump said, sug­gest­ing that the Supreme Court might even­tu­al­ly decide the election.

Biden, for his part, has said he expects to win the elec­tion, but he coun­seled patience Thurs­day, say­ing: “Each bal­lot must be counted.”

Ear­li­er Thurs­day, a Biden cam­paign lawyer called the law­suits mer­it­less, more polit­i­cal strat­e­gy than legal. “I want to empha­size that for their pur­pos­es these law­suits don’t have to have mer­it. That’s not the pur­pose. … It is to cre­ate an oppor­tu­ni­ty for them to mes­sage false­ly about what’s tak­ing place in the elec­toral process,” lawyer Bob Bauer said, accus­ing the Trump cam­paign of “con­tin­u­al­ly alleg­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties, fail­ures of the sys­tem and fraud with­out any basis.”

Trump is used to suing and being sued. A USA Today analy­sis found that he and his busi­ness­es were involved in at least 3,500 state and fed­er­al court actions in the three decades before he became president.

In one case dis­missed Thurs­day, a Michi­gan judge not­ed that the state’s bal­lot count is over as she tossed the campaign’s law­suit to get a clos­er look at local elec­tions offi­cials as they process absen­tee ballots.

In Geor­gia, a state judge dis­missed a case over con­cerns about 53 absen­tee bal­lots in Chatham Coun­ty after elec­tions offi­cials in the Savan­nah-area coun­ty tes­ti­fied that all of those bal­lots had been received on time. Cam­paign offi­cials said ear­li­er they were con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges in a dozen oth­er coun­ties around the state.

In Penn­syl­va­nia, mean­while, the Trump cam­paign won an appel­late rul­ing to get par­ty and cam­paign observers clos­er to elec­tion work­ers who are pro­cess­ing mail-in bal­lots in Philadelphia.

But the order did not affect the count­ing of bal­lots that is pro­ceed­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia and else­where, as elec­tions offi­cials are deal­ing with an avalanche of mail bal­lots dri­ven by fears of vot­ing in per­son dur­ing a pandemic.

Trump cam­paign offi­cials, mean­while, accused Democ­rats of try­ing to steal the elec­tion, despite no evi­dence any­thing of the sort was tak­ing place.

Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Bill Stepi­en, in a call with reporters Thurs­day morn­ing, said that “every night the pres­i­dent goes to bed with a lead” and every night new votes “are mys­te­ri­ous­ly found in a sack.” It is quite com­mon in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions to have vote count­ing con­tin­ue after elec­tion day.

Trump’s cam­paign has also announced that it will ask for a recount in Wis­con­sin. Stepi­en pre­vi­ous­ly cit­ed “irreg­u­lar­i­ties in sev­er­al Wis­con­sin coun­ties,” with­out pro­vid­ing specifics.

The Trump cam­paign filed a new fed­er­al law­suit after hours Thurs­day in Neva­da, alleg­ing that inel­i­gi­ble votes were cast in the Las Vegas area, the biggest Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­hold in an oth­er­wise pre­dom­i­nant­ly GOP state.

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press called Wis­con­sin and Michi­gan for Biden on Wednes­day. The AP has not called Geor­gia, Neva­da or Penn­syl­va­nia, but Biden led both Geor­gia and Penn­syl­va­nia on Friday.

The president’s lawyers have asked to inter­vene in a pend­ing Repub­li­can appeal to the Supreme Court over the three-day exten­sion for the receipt and count­ing of mailed bal­lots ordered by Pennsylvania’s top court. Democ­rats in the state told the jus­tices Thurs­day that they should put off grant­i­ng the request because they “may well not need to hear and decide” the mat­ter if Penn­syl­va­nia is not crit­i­cal to the out­come or the late-arriv­ing bal­lots wouldn’t make a difference.

Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Jill Colvin in Wash­ing­ton, Ed White in Detroit, Marc Levy in Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia, Maryclaire Dale in Philadel­phia, and Sud­hin Thanawala in Atlanta con­tributed to this report.